


Not So Normal

by realfakedoors



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 80's Music, Adam (Voltron) Lives, Allura & Keith (Voltron) Friendship, Allura is Eleven, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Stranger Things Fusion, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst and Humor, Arcades, Bad Boy Keith (Voltron), Basically Lance gets trapped in the Upside Down, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Cigarettes, Comfort/Angst, Drama, F/F, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Keith (Voltron), Hunk (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Hurt Lance (Voltron), James Griffin (Voltron) Being an Asshole, Lance (Voltron) is Missing, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Missing Persons, Monsters & Mana (Voltron), Motorcycles, Mystery, Nerd Lance (Voltron), Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Pining Keith (Voltron), Protective Keith (Voltron), Sassy Pidge | Katie Holt, Shiro (Voltron) is a Good Sibling, Space family gonna save their boy, Suspense, Teacher Coran (Voltron), The Author Regrets Nothing, The Upside Down, Worried Keith (Voltron), basically an excuse for me to write 80s/cigarettes/DnD/arcade vibes, broganes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2019-10-23 11:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17682977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realfakedoors/pseuds/realfakedoors
Summary: It's 1982. Ronald Reagan is in his second year as President of the United States, Michael Jackson'sThrilleris the top hit on the radio, and E.T., the Extra-Terrestial is a box office hit.Everything is as it should be.Especially in Garrison, Indiana. It's your run-of-the-mill, normal, midwestern town, with normal, midwestern people. Five friends get together on Sunday nights for Monsters & Mana at the Holt household.Everything is as it should be.But then, Lance McClain never makes it home one night.And everything isnotas it should be.(AKA, a Stranger Things!AU where Keith is going to turn the world upside down to get Lance back.)





	1. Monsters & Mana

_He’s got to get away as fast as he can._

_Legs burning. Lungs aflame. He’s sprinting, running, leaping and weaving over every bush, past every tree, by any fallen logs. The air doesn’t come fast enough. It’ll never come fast enough._

_He thinks only one thing: he’ll never make it._

_Somewhere behind him, he hears the cry of a friend’s voice – a spell for disguise or protection, and he hopes to Seven Hells and beyond that, whatever they’re trying to do, works. Because boy, oh boy, did he fuck up this time._

_“Shit, shit, shit,” he chants, the mantra the first and last words he’s sure he’ll get the chance to speak. Too bad it wasn’t something more eloquent, like a reflection on death and circumstance or love and power or something crazy awesome. For him, though, “shit” seems like a fitting way to exit this world. It’s not far from the state he entered._

_Another voice, pitchy and nervous, calls for him – this time from ahead. “Hurry! You guys are almost there!”_

_All in all, this wouldn’t be so bad, he thinks. To die like this. He could live with dying as a result of his own mistakes, for this to mark the end of his story. He’d come and go and that would be it, and it would be his fault, and that sucks, but that’s life, right?_

_No. Nada. Not so simple._

_He dragged his friends down with him. He’d led them right into a trap, and now his best friend and his best-rival-frenemy sprinted alongside him, both in dire straits because of his own fuck up._

_Gods, he hates this feeling, the adrenaline. It’s not even remotely epic, no feeling of invincibility, no superhuman strength so he could lift a dragon. Illusions of grandeur? Yeah, right._

_This was a different breed of adrenaline entirely – this was_ fear _and it was telling him to get the fuck out of the forest, and stay the fuck out if he knew what was good for him_

_Then, blessedly, his body disappeared. Not like, in a ‘I just died’ sort of way, but in the stealthy, ninja-assassin kind of way._

_That was Pike’s thing, after all._

_He risked a glance over his shoulder – not before making absolutely sure the path ahead didn’t conveniently open to a comically tall canyon and he would go and Wile E Coyote himself right off the fucking ledge – and was relieved by what he saw. Or, well, more accurately, he was relieved by_ who _he did_ not _see; there was no sign of Block or Thunderstorm Darkness. That was rather very good, or very bad – they’d also managed to hide themselves or pull far enough head that the monster wouldn’t be able to reach them. They were in the clear – or they’d gotten fucking killed and it was absolutely 100% Pike’s fault._

_The trees were thinning. The lights on the other side of the forest was growing brighter, stronger, and he was almost free –_

_The sight before him could have brought a tear to his eye. Maybe it did – he wasn’t even sure._

_Thunderstorm Darkness was bent at the waist, heaving huge breaths of air and being helped to his feet by a strained-looking Jiro. Beside them, Block lay flat on his back, eyes closed, hands running over the grass and crying sweet prayers about how he thought he’d never see it again. Meklavar was grimacing down at the sorcerer, muttering to them about dramatics._

_“You guys almost died,” the axe-wielder informed Pike, Thunderstorm and Block, like they weren’t full aware that they’d almost gotten mauled by a giant fucking Robeast._

_Sighing, Pike let out a low whistle and walked up to his ragtag team of his adventuring buddies and grinned. “Close call, huh? But look, we got the loot!”_

_He held up the bag of coins and the enchanted blade that had gotten them into this mess in the first place, sheepish._

_Four hardened glares looked back at him._

 

* * *

 

_November 7, 1982_

_Garrison, Indiana_

_9:08 pm (21:08)_

 

Lance McClain loved Sunday nights.

“ _Goddamnit_ , Lance!”

Scratch that. He loved _most_ Sunday nights.

“We had that whole ambush strategy laid out and I spent so long preparing the ritual spell! I didn’t even get to use it...”

See, Lance and his friends play Monsters & Mana together on a weekly basis. Sunday evenings to be exact, since it was the only evening that didn’t conflict with Shiro’s football practice. They would usually meet up for dinner at someone's house around six on a rotating schedule, and once they finished, they would pile into cars (or whatever means of transportation was available) and embark for their weekly pilgrimage to the Holt household. Matt was their DM, so it was a courtesy that Keith, Shiro, Lance, and Hunk would meet at the Holt residence for convenience.

And most of the time, Sundays were _great_.

Lance had been a bit wary about the whole tabletop roleplaying scene at first when Hunk and Pidge pitched the idea, but when he heard Keith was going to play, he couldn’t let that jerk and his flippity hair one-up him. So he agreed to play.

That was five months ago.

They were still on their first campaign, though they’d gone through a number of narrative arcs, and Lance had to admit it once he gave it a shot – he _loved_ the game. It was mostly a forum for goofing around with his friends while trying to move their common goals along, whatever inane thing had brought their characters to the table, and it was an easy way to de-stress before starting another week of school come morning. Matt kept them on track and Shiro was _just_ responsible enough to make sure they didn’t stay too late, no matter how close they were to pulling off something epic.

Bearing that in mind, this particular Sunday evening… Lance was not having very much fun right now.

“Why didn’t you ask us to _help_ you?” Beside him, Keith glared daggers, and Lance felt himself wilt slightly. “Or at least let us know you were going to try that? You can’t just say you’re doing something and roll like there’s no consequences.”

Pidge spoke through pursed lips. “Matt, tell me, were there any scenarios where Lance went in there and _didn’t_ fuck everything up?”

“Pidge, language.”

Matt leaned far back in his chair, looking at the ceiling. “As DM, I respectfully refuse to get involved in player-to-player disputes.”

“Lance, I know you thought you had the situation under control, but you almost got Keith and Hunk killed.” A wan smile, patient, like you might wear when speaking to a misbehaving toddler was tagged onto Shiro’s statement. “You’ve got to be more careful.”

It was just a game. They… they all knew it was _just_ a game, right?

Actually, that might be a little hypocritical – _Lance_ knew it was just a game, and yet, he was genuinely upset with himself for fucking things up so badly. They’d been working towards this goal for months, even if it was fictional, and one stupid bad decision had landed them all in choppy waters.

That alone was disheartening, but Lance was actually _shaken_ by what had happened.

It had felt so… _real_?

Thank god he was sitting, because the room was definitely spinning. The term _bad trip_ came to mind, but he wasn’t really sure if the application was the same.

(For the record, just because Lance considered Rolo and Nyma friends, did _not_ mean he was into their drug scene. He’d tried alcohol, once, but he’d never touched LSD, cocaine, pot or even regular old cigarettes. Lance held no judgement – it just wasn’t his sort of thing.)

As someone who’d never been high before, Lance was pretty sure this what it must have felt like. Everything was slightly off, warbled and distant like he’d just come out of a tunnel. He couldn’t really explain it, and that only made it more frustrating – it was like he was getting sick with a cold, but lacked any of the symptoms besides chills.

All evening, since they’d left the Garrett’s house and their dinners behind, Lance couldn’t stop shivering. It was November, and Lance was always a little on the cold side, so he didn’t bat an eye at first, but then his imagination had quickly gotten on board with the tremors; he had trouble focusing when riding over in Matt’s car, and his attention throughout the game had been almost… well, not clouded. That was sort of the opposite – he’d been _too_ aware. He felt like he’d _been_ Pike, could visualize his lungs aching, his muscles sore from running.

The whole experience had been disorienting and had left him feeling a little ill, his head-stuffed with cotton and the disappointment of his friends faces’ was just salt for his wounds.

Lance barely had it in him to defend his actions, but he at least wanted to try to explain himself. Elbows on the table, he spoke sulkingly. “I didn’t know Ranveig’s thugs would have such high perception! It was just supposed to be an easy pickpocket job. I didn’t mean to blow our cover… Sorry guys.”

“Well, ‘sorry’ doesn’t do shit for the campaign loss we just suffered,” Keith puffed out some air, blowing his bangs out of his eyes.

“What happened to the High Priestess?” Hunk asked, sounding like he was dreading the answer.

Matt’s face was grave and he nodded. “Ah yes, the Priestess. You see, Ranveig learned of your intent to double-cross him once your cover was blown, and well… to say it in no uncertain terms, he murdered the fuck out of her.”

“Matt, _please_ , don’t cuss in front of Pidge.” Shiro admonished with a sigh. “She’s _your_ sister!”

The dungeon master merely shrugged as he began to pack up his screen, a cue to the rest of the players that the night’s session was over. It was a convenient place to stop for narratorial purposes, and they were almost at time anyways.

“She knows more creative curse words than I ever will, and you should know well enough that worst thing you could do to Pidge is try to tame her.”

Pidge smirked as she collected everyone’s pencils and character sheets, helping Matt store them for the next session. “Thank you, brother unit.”

“So, just to make sure everyone’s on the same page for next week,” Matt said as he stood, stretching his arms as he did so. “Ranveig is _definitely_ anti-Voltron now. I’d advise not showing your face anywhere _near_ Thayserix for awhile, unless you want to...”

Lance tuned out the rest of Matt’s ‘preview’ talk for the night. This usually consisted of a few key plot elements to bear in mind so they could casually brainstorm throughout the week on what they wanted to do; as he understood, it helped their party to stay on track and it helped Matt to prepare for the next session if everyone was relatively on the same wavelength.

Without his bag – he hadn’t any reason to bring it tonight – Lance found there was nothing he could pretend to clean up or to distract his fidgety fingers. He resolved to scowling at a stain on the old card table in the Holt’s basement, burning a hole through it as his mind wandered.

What _was_ that earlier? Why did the terror feel so… real? Don’t misunderstand, Lance admired Matt as a DM and storyteller, but this had his body and mind on all-kinds of alert that was neither normal or natural, and if he had to guess, probably not healthy either. The thrumming of his heart, the sounds of leaves brushing over his skin as he ran, the cold press of air in his lungs, the _sound_ of the robeast as it got closer, and closer, and _closer_...

“Hey, earth to Lance. You good?” A firm hand clapped him on the back and Lance startled in his seat. It was Matt, seated to his right, and Lance hadn’t realized that everyone was quiet, looking at him with expressions spanning between wary and concerned.

Laughing a little too forcefully, Lance scratched his cheek. “Oh, oh what? Sorry – yeah, yeah, good! I’m fine. Just uh,” he cleared his throat, scrabbling for the first believable excuse he could come up with. “Just uh, thinking about school.”

To his left, he caught Keith’s lips twisting like he’d tasted something sour. “We have a test in Iverson’s tomorrow.”

“Oh, yeah. Olia mentioned that one of his tests were coming up. That’s shitty.” Matt shuddered, and Shiro gave a grave nod, not even bothered by cursing when given in the context of Iverson’s chemistry class. Chemistry with Iverson was like one of those coming-of-age, watershed moments that said _I did it_ , but instead of proudly walking out of the shitty DMV with your license or sneaking out after curfew for the first time, it just fucking sucked from beginning to end. The best reward you got at the end of the nightmare was just the knowledge that you survived.

Lance, to his credit, actually didn’t mind the class _that_ much despite its reputation. As long as Iverson wasn’t being a huge prick to him specifically, he had learned to begrudgingly enjoy the lessons. Keith was the only of his friends in that class, and though the dark-haired boy always _infallibly_ outperformed Lance on every test or quiz, he was still a good studymate and lab partner. If they were bound to suffer, at least they didn’t have to do it alone.

The conversation departed from there into the typical griping, complaints about tests and teachers occupying the attention of those at the table, and Lance forced himself to take a deep breath and release some of the tension in his shoulders. He was thankful that the others took Keith’s excuse and ran with it to account for his spacey behavior. The strange, sort of... _bodily realism_ , if he could call it that, he’d felt during their session had left him uncomfortable, and it was proving difficult for him to focus on the conversation at hand.

A gentle pat on his shoulder jerked him back to reality, revealing a sympathetic Pidge. He hadn’t even realized she’d gotten up from the table. “Iverson’s an ass, Lance. Don’t let him get to you. You may be an idiot, but you’re not _actually_ an idiot.”

Lance scoffed, but adopted a weak smile. “Thanks, gremlin. You’re not so bad yourself. I’m just glad his test at the start of the week and not the end – we can just get it over with this way.”  
“That’s a good way to look at things,” Shiro commented mildly, looking from his watch to the door. He was standing in the middle room a little awkwardly.

Keith sighed and heaved himself out of the seat next to Lance and pointedly pushed his brother towards the couch. “Sit down, would you? We finished early and Adam won’t be here for another ten minutes at least.”

The junior blushed pointedly, and all of them laughed – Lance included. Any mention of the budding romance between popular, golden-boy Adam Wheeler and football captain Takashi Shirogane had become a popular topic for teasing amongst their small, mismatch group of friends, and no one found more joy in the activity than Keith. Getting under Shiro’s usually thick-skin was just too tempting to resist.

Now that the initial shock was working its way out of his system, Lance felt a little more present. His temperature still felt like it was running colder than usual and he ran his hands up and down to garner some friction, but he managed to focus on what the others were doing around him.

Cross-legged on the floor sat Pidge, facing Matt who occupied the couch’s armrest, and Shiro seated beside him. The younger Holt was quizzing the two on the details of their classes, as both Matt and Shiro had been selected as the only two juniors to take part in an experimental advanced science program the school was calling _Kerberos_. (Don’t even ask Lance where the name came from, because he had no fucking clue – maybe it was named after some dead guy?) The _Kerberos Scholars_ , as Garrison High School had so aptly named them, Matt and Shiro spent half their day at the local community college taking classes and the other half at school with the rest of them.

Accordingly, any of the physics technobabble that the three of them discussed went over Lance’s head. He was a decent student, but he loathed physics. Natural sciences – no big deal. Physical science? He’d sooner die.

Hunk, meanwhile was still seated opposite to Lance’s at the card table, taking his ever-exhaustive notes, documenting their session. Where Pidge’s raw genius was sharp, like jagged crystal shards, Hunk’s genius reminded Lance more readily of blown-glass, smooth and slightly more approachable. Both impressive, certainly, but Pidge seemed to see the world in terms of science; Hunk saw science in terms of the world. They were a fantastic pair when they put their minds to anything together, that was for sure.

And that left Keith, occupying the seat beside Shiro on the couch. He didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the physics chatter either, clicking his lighter open and closed in an absent minded sort of way.

If anyone accused Lance of taking that opportunity to admired the pale-skinned boy, he would vehemently deny the slander.

It’s not his fault Keith had grown to be devastatingly attractive in every frustrating fucking way possible. They’d been friend-enemies for a little over four years now, and since the day Lance met him Keith had been the moody, standoffish type. (August 24th, 1979, if you were wondering. Yes, Lance remembers, and _yes_ , he is fully aware what that implies. Please don’t make him say it.) He’d always worn his hair longer; preferred leather jackets to comfortable t-shirts. He rode a fucking _motorcycle_ , smoked cigarettes, and even cut class.

Yeah, Keith was _that_ guy.

And, who would have thought, 1982 rolls around and broody, angry Keith Kogane was the living breathing definition of fucking _choice._ Guys wanted to _be_ him, girls wanted to get _with_ him. The fucker had a mullet before _Sara Smile_ even hit the radio; he was the the prodigal mullet-son, born the same year the Scorpions released their first track. Klaus Meine was probably his German uncle, the motherfucker.

So. You take take Keith’s overall burn-out appearance and his _not-giving-a-fuck_ attitude, and the guy had effectively, surreptitiously, turned himself into every middle-class dad’s worst nightmare. Keith was the guy your parents warned you about, the one parents would have nightmares about finding in their child’s bedroom, half-dressed, tongue in their kid’s mouth; he was the kind that seemed like he’d be lucky to graduate and would probably end up fronting a shitty punk band, but he would look really fucking good doing it.

From an objective standpoint, Lance had to admit, Keith _seemed_ pretty badass.

And then, you get to know him.

And then, you laugh a little, because you realize, Keith’s not badass at all, and that makes it _a hundred times worse_ because he’s fucking actually a _good person_ beneath all that leather and smoke.

Sensitive, intelligent, observant. A sense of humor drier than his native Texas. A talented martial artist.

In reality, Keith was just a genuine goddamn dork like the rest of them. The kind of person who gets together with his friends and plays tabletop board games on the weekend, that teases his big, football player brother about his new boyfriend, that skips class only when his anxiety is acting up. Keith was all kinds of intimidating from the outside with a glare that was as sharp as his weird knife collection, and Lance had little doubt that he _could_ kick your ass if he wanted to. Only, Keith would only ever do something like that under specific circumstances, because he was the kind of person who actually stood up for people he cared about and scared away bullies for the wayward nerd.

Lance knew he only started smoking when his Dad died, and the motorcycle had been one he and his old man had been fixing up _together_.

Case in point, Keith’s behavior was never a part of an act; they were things that were deeply, intimately parts of his stupid personality. There was no persona. He wasn’t a bad boy dealing drugs on the street corner. He didn’t sneak out late at night to take girls riding on the back of his motorcycle. He had never actually hurt anyone without a good reason.

He was just… _Keith_.

“Lance?”

And so the object of his affection – _attention,_ he meant **_attention_** – called his name lightly over the din of their friends happy discussion in the Holt’s basement. Lance blinked repeatedly, only to realize that, ah, shit, he’d been staring for way longer than he thought and Keith had totally noticed.

In lieu of judgement, however, the raven-haired boy raised a brow and mouthed three discernible words: _are you okay?_

Lance was prepared to scoff and bat a dismissive hand, but stopped himself. Instead, a surge of sensation flooded through him, spiking his pulse, and Keith was gone.

_Run, it’s behind you – it’s behind you and your friends could **die** and it would be **your** fault – fuck, fuck –_

Shaking his head, Lance tried to punch down the flicker of sensory experience, confused and a little overwhelmed by the whole thing. Why did he keep… _feeling_ like Pike?

Lance settled on a shrug. He wasn’t… _not_ okay, but he wasn’t exactly okay, either.

Keith flicked his lighter open and this time, left it that way, clicking the flint wheel and sending a tiny dusting of sparks over his ripped jeans. The private fireworks show was so quick that nobody else even noticed, but when Keith nodded his head to the stairs, Lance felt himself smile and nod in understanding.

“I need some fresh air, I think,” Lance stood up, feeling a little weak-kneed on his feet but otherwise back to normal. “Anyone wanna head outside for a few?”

“It’s cold,” Pidge stated, her tone carrying a finality that implied, no, of _course_ no one wants to go outside.

Keith put his lighter back in his pockets and pushed himself to standing. “I could use some air, actually.”

Pidge muttered something under her breath, and Lance was too far away to actually hear it but judging from the swift kick Keith aimed at her, he could only guess it was something mocking.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Shiro called after them, and all of those in the basement laughed as Lance climbed the stairs with Keith behind him. The insinuation struck him as odd, because Keith does things _literally all the time_ that Shiro would never be caught dead doing, but he figured they were just teasing Keith about the clear fact that he wanted to smoke and dismissed the thought.

They passed through the kitchen and managed to avoid upsetting Bebe, the Holt’s dog, and crept onto the back porch quietly. Matt and Pidge’s family had a really nice house as far as Garrison, Indiana went – a nowhere town filled by nobody special – and their porch was on the nicer part of town that overlooked the ravine, the clearing stretching straight across to the school soccer fields. It was much too dangerous to try traversing on foot, and the decline of the ravine definitely justified the eyesore-fence that ran the length of the Holt’s yards and into their neighbors, and then beyond those neighbors all the way til the highway in one direction and the forest in the other.

Keith and Lance were teenagers, so of course they walked right past the patio furniture and sat on the steps of the porch that opened up into the backyard. Keith had the forethought to grab the ashtray off the table and set on the ground to his right, and Lance took the spot to his left.

He quietly observed Keith light the cigarette, something fascinating about the practiced ease with which he lit the end, the flame flickering inches from his nose. The sparks cast a sudden orange splash of color over Keith’s features, making them seem otherworldly for just a moment. Then, almost immediately, he was greeted by the harsh scent of burning nicotine that had attached itself to something in Lance’s mind as _Keith,_ and by extension, could not be catalogued disgusting even if he wanted it to be. Indeed, it had become something familiar, something warm that he wanted to pull closer like a well-worn blanket.

Speaking of familiar, Garrison was but a blip off I-74, hard to spot on most maps – and frankly, even to those who lived there, the town was barely more than that. Most families were staunch Reagan Republicans with their _Make America Great Again_ signs, lining the rows of houses in their midwestern suburb from the churches to the police station, from the school to the interstate. Lance’s family was the only Hispanic one for miles; he didn’t even bother correcting his classmates that had labeled him as the token Mexican. He’s Cuban, but he didn’t expect anti-affirmative action voters to care about technicalities like that. He was brown, and brown was bad – that’s to say nothing of his sexuality. This wasn’t California, so there wasn’t exactly any _Harvey Milk’s_ , and it definitely wasn’t New York with its _Stonewall’s_. This was good old midwestern America, where change was acceptable if you were willing to wait six-hundred years.

“So, what’s wrong with you?” Keith asked after his first slow drag, blowing the smoke down and away from Lance, which he appreciated.

Still, Keith’s lack of social tact left something to be desired. Lance just rolled his eyes. “Nothing really. Just felt a little sick earlier, I think.”

He was surprised when Keith turned to him and frowned, holding his cigarette out the opposite direction. “I thought you looked a little pale. Do you want me to give you a ride home? I have my bike, and as much as I love Adam, he tends to linger and it’s not like Pidge or Matt mind so they wouldn’t push us out. We could still be here for awhile.”

Lance focused his attention to the glow of the smoldering tobacco at the end of Keith’s fingers, not willing to look him in the eye. Something about Keith when he was this close to Lance made his heart flutter and palms sweaty.

“Um, actually, that would be great.” Lance chanced a smile, which he was pleased to see Keith return. “But you can finish your smoke. No need to hurry.”

“Sounds good,” Keith conceded with another inhale, and they sat like that for a short while in companionable silence.

It was Lance who eventually broke it, looking skyward. “You coming to Robotics Club tomorrow?”

Keith snorted and ashed his cigarette, and Lance grinned at the playful knock of Keith’s knees against his. “It would be cruel to leave you with just Hunk, Pidge and Mr. Smythe, so yes, it seems my hands are tied.”

A laugh bubbled to his lips and he risked a glance to Keith to find he, too, was looking at the sky, a wistful smile plastered on his face. The moonlight made his eyes appear especially dark.

“A clear night,” Lance said with a breezy sigh.

Keith took a drag, low and slow, exhaling the words along with the smoke. “Reminds me of you.”

“And what could you _possibly_ mean by that? I’m as pretty as a million stars?” Lance said sarcastically, unimpressed.

“Not what I meant,” replied the dark-haired boy quietly. “The sky’s not really, like, _black._ It’s sort of… blue. Navy, I guess. It just reminds me of that sweater you always wear. You’re wearing it now. It looks nice on you.”

His cheeks pinked rapidly, and Lance blinked in surprise and looked down at his own torso. Right, he’d worn his dark navy turtleneck in addition to his favorite bomber jacket. He wore the sweater a lot, actually, it was sort of part of his signature look in the colder months – but the fact Keith had noticed and pointed it out?

“Aw, you blushing, Sharpshooter?” Keith teased, which earned him a swift elbow to the ribs and and he spouted an indignant “hey!”

Lance harrumphed and looked pointedly the other direction. “I was not blushing!”

“Aw.” Keith grinned lazily and turned his whole torso to Lance, forcing him to twist even further away. “Too bad.”

Finishing his cigarette, Keith pushed the remaining bud roughly into the crystal ashtray with an even more prominent scowl than usual fixed on his face.

Lance raised a brow. He’d known Keith long enough and well enough by now that it was clear when something was bothering him, that there was something he wanted to talk about but didn’t know how. This was how they worked. Most days, Lance talked and Keith listened; it was just what they were good at. Sometimes, when the roles were reversed and Lance needed to be quiet to sort through his messy thoughts or Keith needed to express something that that he wasn’t able to just punch or ignore, they tried to provide the courtesy for each other.

“Something on your mind?” Lance asked with a hum, their usual invitation to noncommittal conversation.

Keith picked at his fingerless gloves, and Lance noticed that he’d singed the left one at some point. He made a mental note to maybe get him a new pair for Christmas.

“Yeah, actually. I guess it’s been something that’s bothered me for awhile now…”

Lance nodded at him to continue, but the other boy averted his gaze. Just as Lance started to scooch closer with every intention of poking Keith’s ribs until he finally spilled, he froze over like water in the arctic.

A hand moved to his knee, holding him in place, and Lance’s eyes widened. Keith’s bottom lip was caught in his teeth, an evident demonstration of his nerves, and the combination of the sight with the weight of the fingers just resting over his leg made Lance’s pulse skyrocket, his ribs feeling like a too-small cage for his too-large heart.

“Keith?” He prodded gently, trying to keep the playful lilt to his tone. “A-Are you good?”

“Lance, listen, I…” the other boy’s grip tightened over Lance’s jeans and a jolt of electricity buzzed through his thigh all the way up his spine. He felt gooseflesh burst over his skin, and Lance found himself very grateful to be wearing something with sleeves so Keith didn’t see how obviously he’d reacted to the other boy’s touch.

The loud ricochet of metal and plastic shocked them apart, and Lance smacked his head back into the bannister of the stairs and Keith clambered into the ashtray behind him, nearly toppling it over.

Shiro appeared in the doorway to the patio, looking a little too smug for Lance’s liking. Not that Lance had any idea _why_ , it’s not like… it’s not like something was about to _happen_.

Then the junior shook his head and the knowing aura slipped away with frightening speed. “Keith, we need to go.”

Keith pushed his hair from his face and threw a glare of his shoulder to his older brother. “I was going to give Lance a ride, actually. I’ll be home after.”

“No, you don’t understand – Mom just called the Holt’s – she’s been taken to the hospital.”

Lance had never seen the dark-haired boy move so quickly, his body snapping upright and wheeling around. “What do you mean?! What happened?”

“I don’t know much… she said it was just an accident and not to worry, but,” Shiro rubbed his hands together, clearly nervous. “Adam is just pulling into the driveway now, and I’m going to ask him to take us to the hospital. I don’t want you to ride your bike all the way down there, you can leave it here and we can come get it tomorrow. Alright?”

Lance had not yet stood from the porch steps, and half-gloved fingers trembled at his eye-level, inches away.

The dark mirrors of Keith’s eyes turned to him, frantic and filled with something Lance didn’t like at all – _fear_.

“Lance, I – I’m sorry, I should –”

“Go! What are you still doing here, both of you go, now.” He made a _shoo_ motion with his hands, and Keith smiled gratefully. “Give Mama Krolia my best, okay? I’m sure it’ll be fine. Just don’t forget to breathe.”

Shiro sent Lance an appreciative nod and buffeted Keith inside, just in time for headlights to flicker and the sound of car pulling into the driveway.

“You sure you’ll…?”

Lance flapped his wrists insistently. “This is way more important! I was originally planning on walking home anyways, you know? So it’s no-harm, no-foul. Seriously.”

“Okay,” Keith let out a sigh and allowed Shiro to guide him through to the front of the house. Adam flashed the lights in a friendly “hello” sort of way. Lance waved.

The older of the brothers gave a quick, “See you, Lance.”

“Later, Keith, Shiro. I hope your Mom is okay.”

Keith sent him a quick two-fingered salute before ducking into the backseat. “See you, Sharpshooter.”

Lance blushed at the nickname, but grinned anyways, hands in his pockets as he watched them load into Adam’s car. The conversation played out as expected, even if he wasn’t privy to the words, just by watching Adam’s reaction: surprised, worried, and then determined in the blink of an eye. Seconds later, they were backing out of the driveway and into the street.

If Lance had known at the time how badly the rest of his Sunday was about to go, he might have insisted on that ride home.

But, such is life. Lance did _not_ know, and instead was focused on the slightly breathy exhale that passed through his lips and the feeling of his heart still slightly aflutter from the way Keith had been touching him, _holding_ him. Lance never wanted him to let go, mullet, leather, smoke and all.

Gods, if he didn’t know better, he would have thought Keith was going to kiss him.

And, gods, if he didn’t know better, Lance was pretty sure he wanted him to.

Shaking the thought from his head, Lance glanced at his watch and groaned. It was later than he thought, even if their session had wrapped up on time. He hadn’t realized how long he’d been sitting with Keith until Shiro interrupted… er, until Shiro _found_ them. They wrapped up at nine most Sundays, and it was already nine-thirty.

He barely poked his head inside when he caught Hunk and Mrs. Holt in the middle of a deep discussion on the structural integrity of yeast, Matt standing by astutely. The older Holt caught his eyes and Lance jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate he was going. Smiling, but knowing better than to try to interrupt a Garrett-Holt conversation in any capacity, Matt waved and mouthed _bye_ and Lance slipped out the door.

He pulled on his shoes in the garage and spotted a few spiderwebs, getting the pins-and-needle sensation of bugs on his skin when he failed to spot and murder the offending spider that dared to capitalize on the Holt’s home. After thoroughly brushing his arms and legs of invisible creepy-crawlers, Lance sighed and took to the street ahead.

He only lived about ten minutes away.

Lance didn’t even make it the end of the Holt’s drive before the street lamps began to flicker, houses following a similar wobbling pattern of light-dark-light. He didn’t think much of it at first, but by the time he reached the end of the road, Lance realized the periods of dark began to outweigh the flickers of light. Maybe there was something wrong at the power plant? He figured someone at home would know, probably something on the news that would be the chatter of his parents when he walked in.

For whatever reason, that explanation did little to dismiss the terrible knots forming in his stomach. Lance turned left at the end of the Holt’s street, towards the street that would turn into his own street about a half-mile down. Without really meaning to, Lance had picked up his pace.

Part of him wanted to stop and turn around, to trace out the source and determine that he was being paranoid. Another few flickers, and the street went completely dark. He heard a rustle somewhere off the tree-lined street, there was a _noise._ It definitely was not a car.

Ahead of him, in the fucking _street_ , there’s an outline of… _what the fuck **is** that?_

There was too little light for him to make out significant details, but it was at least as big as Kaltenecker, probably even bigger. A horrible, lowly rumble escaped from its mouth, and the things lips were pulled back, exposing its rows of teeth in a horrible snarl. They were decidedly sharp, pointed. _Hungry_.

Nope. Fuck that.

Lance was not going to die today, no sir, and he turned on the spot and ran back in the direction of the Holt’s house, cutting into the trees because he was not about to get attacked by a – a fucking _bear-demon-creature-monster_. Nope.

The earlier nausea and heady sensation he’d felt in the middle of their session had redoubled.

Pike had been lucky, though. He’d made it, rolled a natural 19 on an evasive check and managed to burst through the trees and into the waiting clearing of his friends.

But Lance?

_He’s got to get away as fast as he can._

_Legs burning. Lungs aflame. He’s sprinting, running, leaping and weaving over every bush, past every tree, by any fallen logs. The air doesn’t come fast enough. It’ll never come fast enough._

_He thinks only one thing: he’ll never make it._

He doesn’t make it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has been sitting in my Google Drive since Novemeber... I might continue it sometime, or I might not, but I didn't want to just have it left unread forever lol. we'll see!


	2. The Vanishing of Lance McClain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which, the police begin looking into Lance's disappearance. Keith isn't taking it well, Shiro tries to be a good, supportive brother, Hunk is a little rebellious, Pidge is skeptical, and, through a chance meeting, they all encounter a princess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEET okay after such a positive, glowing round of feedback I've decided to pick this back up and continue it! thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts, kudos and views for the first chapter -- it means a lot to me!!
> 
> that said, some details to iron out:
> 
> pidge is in 9th grade; keith, hunk and lance are in 10th grade; matt, shiro and adam are in 12th grade.  
> their ages: Pidge (14), Keith (17), Hunk (16), Lance (16), Shiro (19), Adam (18), Matt (17).
> 
> Krolia & [Insert Name Here] Shirogane had Takashi Shirogane out of wedlock in 1963. Krolia met and married Kenneth "Texas" Kogane in 1964, and had Keith Kogane 1965. They were married from 1964-1977, at which point Keith was 11 and Shiro was 14, when Texas died in a fire rescue on the job.

_November 8, 1982_

_Garrison, Indiana_

_6:30 am (06:30)_

 

Yawning, Keith rolled over and smacked his hand down on the dresser with the practiced annoyance of any teenager getting up for school on a Monday morning. His alarm was always set to _109.5 FM_ , and the reliable punk rock station would always go off like a warhead in the silence of his bedroom; he depended on it playing something intense and _ska_ -enough to wake him the fuck up no matter how tired he was.

On that particular Monday, Keith was _very_ tired, so the added kick of the Angry Samoans was appreciated.

He and Shiro had been at the hospital until almost two in the morning with their mother – she had insisted they get back into Adam’s car and drive right home, but neither brother were interested in sleep when they heard she’d been brought to the emergency room.

In reality, it really hadn’t been _that_ bad of an experience, just a minor injury at work. She was a security guard at a chemical industrial firm on the outskirts of the city, and the incident had involved a knife-wielding disgruntled ex-employee and her just doing her job; it could have been a lot worse, had she not caught the attacker’s arm and vaulted him over her shoulder and into the ground like it was some kind of fucking Randy Savage finishing move.

The guy had still managed to get a nick against her upper arm, enough to warrant a check at the hospital and a tetanus booster, as well as a few added tests that were mandated by her place of employment – getting attacked in a chemical plant? Yeah, Keith could imagine that going badly _very_ easily.

Was he paranoid?

Oh, you better fucking believe it.

After his Dad died, he was not going to even joke about the possibility of losing his mom, too. In all, their worrying seemed to be for nothing as she was discharged after a few hours with the instruction of rest and keeping the wound dressed so it wouldn’t get infected, but her job was giving her a few extra days paid-leave just in case.

That being the case, it was a nice change of pace for Keith to drag his ass out of bed and spot her in the kitchen fixing them breakfast.

“G’Morning,” he called, voice gravelly as he shuffled his way out of his room.

“Morning!” She called back, head popping around the hallway just before Keith entered the bathroom and waving. “Be ready to go in about half an hour, okay? I’m driving you today.”

Without bothering to respond, Keith had to roll his eyes as he heard Shiro coming down the stairs with his usual pep, thanking their mom and probably figuring out a way to end world hunger at the same time. Shiro was just that kind of guy.

Showering and doing his hair – that is to say, not doing shit to it – didn’t take him very long, and about ten minutes later he was skirting beside Shiro to let him in the bathroom to brush his teeth while Keith clambered back to his room to get dressed. The satisfyingly familiar smell of bacon, along with and something earthy and warm lured him back to the kitchen without wasting any time.

“How’d you sleep, kid?” asked his mother, yawning while she slid a plate of breakfast his way. As was his habit, Keith began to wolf it down without pausing to breathe or respond besides shrugging.

The woman chuckled, leaning into the counter while she sipped at a cup of coffee. “You’ve got robotics with the others tonight, right?”

“Mmhmm,” he said around a mouthful of toast. “‘E ‘ome a’ound fa’ve.”

“Chew your food, Keith,” scolded Shiro, popping up beside him in his letterman’s jacket and perfectly weird-coiffed puff of white hair pointing Keith’s direction. “No one wants to see that.”

He rolled his eyes, taking a drink of his own cup of coffee. “Wow, thanks. I had no idea that I was supposed to _chew_ the food.”

“Be nice, boys,” Krolia hummed, turning her back to them and running a hand through her ponytail, still messy from sleep. “Another fifteen minutes and we’ll go?”

Once they both murmured some form of agreement, the woman walked out of the kitchen towards her bedroom, probably to change.

“Soooo…” began the older of the brothers, sliding into Keith’s personal space as he took the seat beside him at the counter. He was sporting an annoying ass grin, the one he usually wore before he was about to test out his next shitty joke. “Sorry about _walking in_ on you and Lance last night. Hope I didn’t _interrupt anything_.”

“Oh, of course not.” Without skipping a beat, Keith finished off his food and made sure to _accidentally_ kick into his brother’s shin on his way to the sink. “Oops.”

Hissing under his breath, the famed Garrison quarterback bent at the waist and nursed his new bruise, sending a pout at his little brother.

“Hey, _I_ happen to think it’s sweet that you have a crush on La–”

“ _I don’t!_ ” Keith snapped, shooting a glare in Shiro’s direction that would certainly kill lesser men. However, his immediately defensive reaction – coupled with the betrayal of red flush that colored his cheeks – suggested otherwise.

Coughing, Keith cleaned his dish and gathered his book bag and jacket. “I, I-I _don’t_. We’re just friends, okay? Stop trying to make something out of something that isn’t there. And, besides he probably doesn’t even… _you know_?”

“But what if he _does_?” Shiro prodded, his tone no longer teasing as he too slung his book bag over his shoulder and began tying his shoes. “You don’t _actually_ know, right? Adam is pretty close with Lance’s sister, and he said she’s pretty sure he’s –”

“I – _no,_ shut up, stop that,” Keith scowled, standing next to the door. “You’re not making me talk about this. There’s not even something _to_ talk about.”

“Whatever you say,” hummed Shiro, said with just enough of a sing-songy undertone that it made Keith grind his teeth together. “Do you want to see if the Holt’s will give you a ride home today? If they can then you could pick up your bike.”

“Mm,” he answered noncommittally. “Sure, I’ll ask Pidge, I’m sure they won’t mind. I still kinda feel bad I didn’t end up taking Lance home, and before you say shit, it’s because he said he wasn’t feeling well.”

“He did seem kind of out of it,” Shiro admitted with a frown. “I sort of feel bad about the session, too. We sort of ganged up on him.”

“True, but he sort of deserved it considering he didn’t clue us in on shit until –”

Before Keith could finish the thought, the door at the other end of the hall opened and their mother walked out, looking a little more prepared to go outside, but she wasn’t in her Marmoran Security uniform; it was a nice change to see her in day clothes with how often she worked.

She grabbed her keys from a hook near the counter and headed for the door. “Ready, boys?”

With similar grunts of assent, the two followed her out to the car in their garage, Shiro taking the front seat and Keith grumbling as he dragged himself into the seat behind their mother.

Key in the ignition, she started up their 1974 Firebird, engine rumbling to life with a satisfying, if not loud, groan of steel and gasoline.

“So Keith’s got robotics, Takashi you’ve got practice – is Adam going to come over tonight?”

“Maybe, he’s got something going on with his sisters. Dance practice or something. He said he might try to stop by for awhile so we can study French, there’s a test Thursday.”

“Please tell me that’s not code for french kissing,” the woman raised a brow as they came to a stop light, and Keith had to laugh at his brother’s clear chagrin.

“ _No_ , Mom, we just started dating! And I’ve been taking French since freshman year!”

Chuckling along, Krolia hit him on the arm playfully. “I know, I know. I’m just asking so I can make enough food if he’ll stay for dinner. I’m going to the store today to pick up stuff later.”

The three continued the light conversation on the way to school, which, seeing as it was less than a ten minute drive, ended up occupying the remainder of the ride. Shiro sprang out of the car promptly, and both Krolia and Keith rolled their eyes when they saw him make a beeline for none other than Adam Wheeler himself, looking bright as a ray of sunshine on a Monday morning in front of the school. They shared a chaste but sweet peck on the lips, words unheard from the car but Keith had little doubt that they were cloyingly sweet.

Turning around in the front seat, Keith’s mother met his eye. “Got everything you need? You know if your anxiety acts up to –”

“Call you.”

“And _no_ fights, kid. I mean it. You’ve already gotten into two this year, and third one’s out of school suspension for a _week_. If I hear about one more, I’ll –”

“Take away my bike.” Keith sighed, but gave her a well-meaning smile. “ I know, Mom. Thanks.”

Her lip quirked up at the corner and she tried to ruffle his hair, which Keith managed to dodge and slip out the car door.

“ _Bye!_ ” he called, half relieved as she laughed and pulled out of the parking lot, and the sigh that sat on his lips at her departure was filled almost as quickly by a cigarette, pulling both it and his lighter out of the backpocket of his jeans. As was habit at this point, he turned around at the front of the school and veered left towards the neighboring football fields. All the _cool kids_ hung out here, as in, shitty preps with their shitty drama and their shitty senses of humor, which made it all the more satisfying as Keith walked right past them and up the bleachers, where he knew he’d find his favorite trio of nerds.

Even in November, air frosty and wind unforgiving, they didn’t have anywhere inside to go before their first class. The hallways had long since been staked out by, unspoken claims made on different parts of the building by the upperclassmen, jocks, whichever half of the prep’s the other half was mad at, stoners, or the other, shitty nerds who weren’t _his_ nerds. As a result, they didn’t have anywhere else to really go, and while Keith didn’t really _fit_ with Lance, Pidge and Hunk, per say, they’d never made him feel unwelcome.

 

Quite the opposite, in fact.

 

* * *

 

_May 1, 1981_

_Garrison, Indiana_

_7:13 am_

 

Lance was one of those people where, most of the time, you _heard_ him before you _saw_ him.

“ _Mullllllllllllllet!”_

Especially for Keith. He took the familiar climb up the bleachers in the morning, glad he’d forgone his jacket in the seasonable weather. It was a t-shirt and torn jeans kind of day, and he squinted up at the top of the bleachers to see a long arm waving him up. Pidge was chattering to her brother animatedly about something, and Hunk looked like he was going over some notes for a class.

“Do you need the whole town to hear you?” Keith groaned back in a good-natured way, and Lance tilted his head to the side while wearing his signature, goofy grin.

“I dunno, I’m surprised you can even hear me with all that trash music you blare all the time.”

Without skipping a beat, Keith took the spot on the row beneath Hunk and Lance, beside Pidge. She and Matt both broke their conversation to greet him, which he returned in kind.

“You wouldn’t know good music if it killed you, idiot,” he added to Lance in an afterthought.

Naturally, the tan-skinned teen took the jab in stride. Keith sensed more than he saw his animated gestures as he popped up in the seat behind him, snapping his fingers in a stroke of creative “brilliance.”

“Oh ho ho, we’ll see about that _Mr. Black Flag_! I’m going to do you a great favor – how did I not think of this sooner?”

“Oh no,” Hunk murmured, glancing up from his book properly for the first time. “Keith he’s going to make you a mixtape.”

“A mixtape?” He repeated, blinking as he craned his head back. A big-headed shadow blocked out the sun a moment later, bright in a different sort of way.

“Yes, mullet, a famed McClain mixtape, all from the goodness of my own heart. We need to get you cultured properly.”

At that, he had to laugh. “Sure, Lance. You can give me some pop-rock shit mixtape –”

“Hah!” Lance looked like Keith had just cured him of cancer.

“ _But_ ,” he interjected. “If you’re going to _culture me_ , then you’ve gotta listen to a mixtape from _me_ in exchange. We’ll see who has the shittier taste in music, Sharpshooter.”

Surprised, Lance pulled back slightly, a momentary look of doubt crossing his usual confident smirk. It was fleeting, though, and he came back with his usual fervor.

“You’re on, _Keef_.”

 

* * *

 

_Garrison, Indiana_

_November 8, 1982_

_7:13 am_

 

“Oh, there he is!” Hunk called out the moment Keith’s head cleared the opening of the bleachers as he climbed the steps.

Now that he was ‘technically’ off school grounds (he was _above_ the grounds), he lit his smoke and took a large, satisfying inhale, enjoying the heated burn of ash that filled his lungs and calmed his nerves. He tucked his lighter away, finishing the drag before waving and climbing the steps to join them.

Only, he stopped midwave, tilting his head to the side.

The trio was only a duo this morning. He and Shiro had gotten in a little early since Mom drove them, though.

Pidge’s grin was predictably impish as Keith ascended the steps to reach their usual spot. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

Keith was grateful he’d decided to start the morning with a cigarette. “God, fuck you guys.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Hunk frowned like a puppy who’d just been scolded.

“He’s just upset because he’s so _painfully obvious_.” Pidge laughed, consoling Hunk with a firm clap on the shoulder. “So did ya, you know, plant one on him during your romantic little moonlight talk?”

“ _Seriously_ , it’s not like that. Would you fuckin’ quit it?”

The girl sniffed, pretending to be offended. “Whatever, Kogane. Drown in your own denial.”

“Do you think you’re ready for Iverson’s test?” Hunk asked in a masterfully unsubtle attempt to move away from the topic, for which Keith was grateful.

They spent their remaining ten minutes talking, and in Keith’s case, smoking, before the warning bell rang. Monday classes would begin, officially, in four minutes.

Hunk was the first to get up, his bag already organized and ready. “Alright, well, see you guys at Robotics?”

“Yep,” Pidge agreed. “Good luck on that test. Tell Lance the same when he finally shows up.”

Keith’s lips turned up in a half-smile. “Sure. Exam days are good in a way, at least I don’t have to hear Griffin run his fuckin’ mouth for once.”

The three shared a quick laugh as they took the bleacher steps and made their way towards the side entrance. Luckily, Keith’s first class – Drawing II – wasn’t far off from his locker, and he made a quick stop to drop off his bag and grab his sketchbook before turning down the hall towards the art rooms.

Sometimes, Keith imagined their little town of Garrison, Indiana suffered from a collective sickness that extended to the city limits. It infected the _place_ moreso than the people, but the community was all affected as a result. Almost like a mist or dusty film over an old photograph, the world was most often washed out, leaving him almost colorblind.

It probably had something to do with the fluorescent lighting if he were honest, making pale complexions look sallow or the colors of jackets or bookbags or school spirit banners turn dull. Whatever the cause, whether it be a crowd of girls moving out of the bathroom together or a group of preps laughing at some shit joke, Keith felt like he always watched it all move around him at the end of a tunnel, on the other side of the glass. He _knew_ at a conscious level that the lockers were dark green and the cheerleaders uniforms were gold and ‘baby blue’ and that his own jacket was black leather, it still managed to look _off_ , somehow. Like a Lite-Brite with the bulbs burnt out, or a watercolor rendering when you expected to be bold brushstrokes, it was all just lackluster.

There were certain moments or memories that could burst light and colors stubbornly through the practiced indifference of the hallways of the high school or down Main Street without even trying, but those were the exception, not the rule.

There were certain people, too. Shiro and Adam were always reliable, Hunk and Pidge made him feel like he belonged, and Lance was a literal fucking _beacon_ , unapologetically loud and blindingly bright.

Today, the halls felt particularly dull.

Glancing down the corridor one last time, Keith felt a small flicker somewhere between his lungs, like a little pinion of light in his chest rose up, only for the feeling to be dashed just as quick.

Some kid awkwardly tried to duck around him into the art room, bringing Keith back to the present. Sighing, he stepped back to let them enter and then went in himself, heading towards his usual table and plunking down in his undeclared-but-totally-his seat. The unstructured class setting suited him, and he could spend the entire period working on whatever project the teacher had asked of them without anyone to bother him. It allowed Keith to get pulled into his work, almost forgetting about Lance’s notable absence from their morning routine.

The remainder of the morning passed without much thought, Keith drifting from his language class and suffering through another lesson on the imperialist Soviet Union in world history.

Part of him wished he’d ducked out of the lesson early to smoke – he could feel his hands itching for his lighter, lungs tired and cold and craving nicotine, before 10:30 AM – but he decided to just use the time to brush up on his chemistry notes for the last half-hour; if Lance _was_ going to take Iverson’s exam, Keith couldn’t afford to be shown up; Lance was crazy competitive about their scores for god knows why, and he’d successfully managed to rope Keith into the desire to outperform the other.

And so, fourth period chemistry came, and fourth period chemistry went.

The seat beside him at the two-person table was empty when he showed up, and it remained empty through the exam, and it was still empty when he turned his test in and left early. (Of course, Iverson tried to stop him, but he was already out the door by the time the man called after him.)

Keith made a beeline for the west-end bathroom on the first floor, propping open the window with an old splintered piece of wood before hopping out the otherside. He was being stupid, he _knew_ that, but there was an unwelcome prickly feeling on the back of his neck. Lance said he wasn’t feeling well yesterday, and he was probably just staying home. So why the fuck does everything about today feel so _weird_?

It was cold, seeing as this was Indiana in the middle of November. So, naturally, someone actually _in_ the bathroom complained, and after promptly telling them to fuck off Keith lit his cigarette. It was harder than it should have been, hands trembling ever so slightly with the late autumn chill.

Once the flame caught, though, the relief was immediate.

 _Fuck_.

He really needed this.

It was scorching heat, but the burn was relaxing, _soothing_ , his heart rate rising but anxiety tempering out in response to the ventigious whirlwind of chemicals that saturated his blood and body. Idly, he thought about the irony that was their mandatory health class – he and Hunk shared that period at the end of the day – and of all of the terrible, _awful_ things smoking could do to a person. He exhaled in grayscale, watched the tendrils of the burn wisp away, reduced to nothing almost as quick.

Smoking would kill him someday. Lance reminded him of that often.

He inhaled again.

The cigarette burnt out just in time for the fifth period bell to ring – lunch, with the others, thank _fuck_ – and his hands were no longer shaking, but his chest felt tight anyways. It could have been from the burning tobacco or his anxiety; Keith really didn’t even know anymore.

Shiro stuck around his older group of friends, Adam included, during their shared lunch period most days, but he often stopped by their table to just check in with them. Keith appreciated that, usually, but today he was not really in the mood for his brother’s poking and prodding.

“You okay?” he clapped Keith on the back as he stared mindlessly into his Capri-Sun straw.

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Just had that exam, though. I’m sort of already spent, mentally.”

In his very Shiro-way, the senior nodded with understanding and backed off the subject thereafter. He was swept away by Adam a few minutes later to go do… whatever it is that seniors like them do. Keith would not  – and, gods willing, would never – know.

The second half of the day zipped by with the aid of stupid P.E. – where he’d elected to wander towards the weight room instead of playing something that was genuinely insulting to call a soccer match – his second art class, and health, which was almost comically easy. He shared that class with Hunk, who was a diligent enough student that it relieved him of the task of actually paying attention (if he missed anything important, Hunk would tell him later).

With the way his anxiety had been all day, he elected to fuck off for ninth period, though. He didn’t want to leave, since he’d agreed to go to Robotics Club with Hunk and Pidge, but he was _awfully_ tempted to hop the sad excuse of chain link structure and just walk… _somewhere._

Somewhere _not_ here.

 

* * *

 

_Daibaazal, Indiana_

_October 10, 1980_

_3:02 pm (15:02)_

 

“I can’t wait to get out of this town,” Matt wrinkled his nose, an annoyed edge to his tone as he dragged a seat from another table to plop down at the end of their booth.

Hunk, pausing in the middle of his ravenous feast of burger, fries, and strawberry milkshake, quirked a brow. “What’s the hurry?”

“I’m just sick of everyone here, it’s been like this _forever_.” Matt groaned, and his bad mood definitely didn’t have anything to do with his recently failed relationship. “I just want to go _somewhere_ , you know? Get away for a little while.”

“Where would you go?” Keith asked, genuinely curious.

“Somewhere _not_ here.” Lance grumbled, barely intelligible around the straw of his milkshake. “I’m with Matt. Days like this make me miss Cuba.”

Glancing briefly out the window, Keith could only imagine what Lance might mean by that – it was barely autumn proper and they’d taken on a horrible spike of wintry air, dropping unexpectedly into the single digits before his birthday even rolled around. It was unusual, but not unheard of, in the midwest, and Lance, having grown up with sunny, cozy beaches and salty ocean air (and, if you believed what people said about him behind his back, communism), was clearly out of his element, folded in on himself in the Arus diner booth. His choice of a cold drink despite his bulk of coat and hoodie and hat seemed especially counterproductive, and Keith was about to mention something, maybe pointedly call him an idiot for such a choice, when he perked up suddenly.

“Oh, shit! It’s the 10th, right? 10/10 baby, that’s Independence Day!”

Pidge yawned, nodding. “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Is your family doing anything?”

Almost as quickly as he’d drawn up in his seat, Lance’s posture wilted. He pouted down into his milkshake. “No, we kind of stopped after last year. Mamá used to make a big dinner but now that Rachel moved out and Luis was in the hospital this time last year, it didn’t really make sense. I think it was sort of nice for her not to have to make a big deal over everything.”

Matt flicked a folded up napkin at Lance, making its mark square on his nose. “This is what I’m sayin’ my boys. This town drains the life out of people sometimes. Let’s celebrate!”

“Celebrate, like, right now?” Lance blinked, surprised.

Matt shrugged. “Shit, I mean, it’s Saturday and we weren’t really planning anything! Wanna go to the arcade? The mall or something? You pick, Lancelot, and we’ll do it. Or we can celebrate your Cuban Independence with good ol’ American patriotism and… I dunno, go shoot guns and farm corn or something.”

Lance laughed and bit his lip, gaze flickering to the others in the booth around him. Hunk, beside him, nodded enthusiastically, and Pidge rolled her eyes in a way that said “whatever.”

When he looked at Keith, resembling a kid who’d been told they might be allowed to open a Christmas present one day early, he had a pathetically sweet twinkle in his eye that definitely hadn’t been there moments ago. He was so blatantly excited about the idea, it was silly. Indeed, they were going to hang out for the rest of the night _anyway_ , it was a Saturday after all, but if labeling it as a day _for_ Lance would really make that amount of difference then…

“Sure, fine. Let’s do it.”

Grinning, Lance looked like he was about to start vibrating in place with his enthusiasm. He took a big chug of his shake and slammed a fist into the table.

“Aw, _guys_. Now if it was just fifty degrees warmer, it would be perfect.”

Hunk nudged him. “Hey, I agreed to celebrate Cuban Independence a la Lance, not enact climate change. Pick something we can at least accomplish in one night.”

“ _Oooookay_ ,” he sighed. “I wanna go toooooo…”

 

* * *

 

_Garrison, Indiana_

_November 8, 1982_

_3:02 pm (15:02)_

 

Sighing, Keith walked to the around to the side of the building that hosted the bleachers, sliding down the brick wall and closing his eyes. The methodic ritual of opening his carton of smokes and pulling out his flint-top lighter was ingrained into his muscles so readily, he needn’t even open his eyes. He wondered if that was a sign that he smoked too much. Probably.

Didn’t stop him from inhaling the moment the wick of flame caught burnt paper, satisfying poison filling him in the chilly mid-November air.

He spent the hour slowly nursing the smoke, and when that burnt out, he returned to his bookbag and pulled out his sketchbook. Might as well be productive, he figured.

When Robotics Club came around. It was, well... _Robotics._

“Oh _fuck_ yes!” Pidge turned to Hunk, who was already waiting to return her high-five with his palm splayed wide. “A Heathkit ham shack!”

Mr. Smythe sent her a disapproving glare for cursing, but simply sighed and walked to the desk. Settled in the center of the table was a ridiculous-looking machine that was all wires and dials and bulbs as far as Keith was concerned, but both Pidge and Hunk seemed excited about it.

“How did you manage to get one?” Hunk said the words almost like a song, and Keith sat in one of the seats on the far side of the desk, watching.

This was where Lance would crack some sort of joke, probably something about how Mr. Smythe had to go through some sort of duplicitous means to afford such a thing, which was actually pretty funny because Mr. Smythe was the most straight-and-narrow person Keith had ever met. Then, Keith would probably retort how Lance had no idea what he was talking about because he was _way_ too innocent to know almost anything about whatever he suggested. Maybe he’d aim a kick at Keith in rebuttal, or maybe he’d toss out some thoughtless insult about his hair being messy and dumb.

“Keith?”

He startled in his seat, surprised when Mr. Smythe gently rested a hand on his shoulder. Thankfully, Pidge and Hunk were too absorbed in testing the settings of their new toy to have noticed.

Clearing his throat, Keith managed a smile. “Oh, um, yeah. Just a long day.”  

The man looked wholly unconvinced. “Shiro mentioned something happened to your Mother… you know you can tell me if something is wrong, don’t you?”

“Huh?” Keith blinked. Oh, shit, right. “Ah, um, Mom’s fine. It was just a work incident, I guess. She has to take the week off for company policy and legal stuff, but she’s okay. We were at the hospital for awhile, though.”

That appeared to have done it, because the older man nodded and flattened out his moustache thoughtfully. “Right, right. Marmoran Security _is_ serious business, I hear. I’m glad it wasn’t serious.”

“Me too.”

“Hey, Keith,” Pidge’s head popped up from behind the monstrosity on Coran’s desk. “Come check this out, I bet this bad boy can pick up frequencies outside of Earth’s atmosphere. Which means...”

Hunk rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Oh, no.”

“Aliens?” he asked.

Smiling, Pidge answered, “ _Aliens.”_

Keith was already out of his seat and moving around the other side of the desk, accepting the proffered headphones. Annoyingly, he couldn’t shake the heavy weight of guilt in his gut, the situation still feeling _wrong_ without Lance there – he’d have tried to snatch the headphones at the last second so Keith would have to fight to get them back, or would have joined up with Hunk and made fun of the both of them for believing in aliens in the first place.

He pushed the thought from his mind, settling the padded speakers against his ears and listening to the sound of crackling nothingness, like the TV would make when the signal was lost to salt-and-pepper pixel storms.

“Here,” Hunk pointed to a dial. “Turn this and you should be able to eventually pick up something.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Smythe and Pidge had started one of their regular debates on the practical existence of life outside of Earth, but this went unheard by Keith as he followed Hunk’s instructions.

Carefully, he twisted the dial back and forth and back again, warbled sounds and twisted waves chattering in his ear, none of which was discernible in any sort of language whatsoever.

Frowning, Hunk leaned in to look at the Heathkit more closely. “It _should_ be getting something… here, try this.”

He flipped two switches and turned the dial all the way to one side, softening the distorted sound in Keith’s ears and changing the crackling to more of a wobbly metronome, the pulse behind it steady but sort of… stretched out? That was the closest description Keith could come up with.

Moving the dial again, Keith grinned up at Hunk almost immediately.

_"Air Australia 452 good afternoon, radar identified maintain 7 thousand.”_

_"Roger, maintain 7 thousand."_

_"Air Australia 452, after noise abatement turn heading 0-9-0."_

_"Right heading 0-9-0 after noise, Air Australia 452."_

“Shit, that’s actually pretty cool,” he said as he offered the headphones back. “It sounded like some… pilot stuff, maybe planes or something, but it was Australia.”

“I know!” Hunk squealed, delighted. “Ohh we should see if we can find any Cuban stations, maybe even a radio channel, that would so cool for Lance. I bet he’d love that.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Hunk!” Mr. Smythe complimented. “Hold on a tick, I’ve got a channel guide that might help point us in the right direction – granted there’s no perfect system for this…”

The teacher hummed and murmured to himself while he scanned the shelves of his office, and Pidge rejoined them at the desk at the front of his office.

“He’ll flip if we can find something like that,” Pidge agreed taking the headphones back and pushing one pad to her ear, immediately pushing buttons and spinning knobs that meant very little to Keith. He wasn’t unfamiliar with hands-on work after his Dad helped him build his bike, but this was fairly new-age compared to engines and gear shifts, so he was pretty much useless as a result.

Lance was actually pretty good with technology – not nearly to the caliber of Hunk or Pidge – but he was usually able to pick up whatever they were working on pretty quickly. Shiro had mentioned before that he was sort of a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ in that way, to which Lance said _Jack is a dumb name_ and that it was an insult to his beautiful, god-given name to call him anything but.

No sooner had the thought occurred to him did Keith smile, fondly, because sometimes Lance was just like that. Stupid and goofy and impossibly charming without even trying – and, _fuck, stop that_. He wasn’t supposed to think about his friend like – like _that_ – and he didn’t even know if Lance would ever be _interested_ in him, and geez, Keith was awfully pathetic if, after only one day at school without him, he was fucking pining like it had been months.

Mr. Smythe pulled down a three-ring binder that seemed like a personal compilation of stuff that was above Keith’s head when it came to radios, and he began flipping through the pages while returning to his desk. Eyes flickering across the page, the man was evidently searching for something, but whatever he’d been looking for would ultimately remain unfound when their tiny “club” was interrupted.

At the opposite end of the room, the door had been left partially open, and it creaked the remainder of the way. They all looked up to identify a female figure, backlit by the lights of the biology classroom, framed in the doorway.

“Excuse me.”

Keith recognized the stone-cold glare of a face he knew all too well – Ellen Sanda.

As in, _Police Chief_ Ellen Sanda.

And then, exactly three things happened.

Keith recalled each one distinctly.

Pidge dropped the headset she’d been holding, and it smacked loudly into the Heathkit on its way down; Hunk gasped something that sounded like _“oh no_ ,” but it was too choked and quiet for him to really tell; Keith clenched his fists so tightly that half-moon impressions dug themselves into the lining of his fingerless gloves.

The Police Chief asked the three of them to come with her, though Keith wouldn’t really remember that until much later. All of the pent up frustration and weird feelings that had been pricking at his skin and pushing on his ribs had finally amounted to – to _something_. Like a riptide in the arctic had risen up, a terrible chill spread through his chest, the currents yanking him under in an attempt to drown him in their icy depths. Keith swore his lungs were filled with water, that the pneumonia was already starting to set in.

...

He was sitting now.

He didn’t even remember moving.

Keith, Pidge and Hunk were crowded on a small couch in Principal Ryner’s office, who was notably absent, and Sanda stood opposite them across a quaintly decorated coffee table. Before the door could close another officer caught the door, holding it open for Shiro to enter a moment later.

“Keith?” He said, surprised, then his gaze flickered to Chief Sanda and then back again. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

Chief Sanda turned her attention to the meek officer who stood in the doorway.

“And where is Mr. Holt?”

“He already went home for the day, ma’am.”

Her lip twitched in a way that suggested this news annoyed her, but she quickly dismissed the officer and turned back to the room. Shiro had moved to stand beside Keith on the far-side of the couch, with Pidge in the middle and Hunk on the side nearest to the door.

“Now, first thing,” Sanda began, addressing them all, though Keith had a feeling the words were being heavily weighted towards him. “I want you to know none of you are in trouble. But it’s _very important_ that you’re all honest with me. I have a few questions for you –”

“It’s about Lance, isn’t it?” Hunk blurted, and Keith felt his weight shift the couch cushions as he anxiously leaned forward. “I-I’m sorry, ma’am, just – he seemed sick yesterday and he’s been gone all day and –”

“Mr. Garrett, please,” she held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t work yourself up into an episode, but, yes. Veronica and Rosa McClain have both sung the praises of what good friends you are to him, which is why it is essential that you are all truthful in any of the questions I ask you.”

“Ma’am, can you at least tell us _what_ is going on? Please, just – ” Shiro, as the oldest and most responsible out of any of them, took the part of de facto leader – thank god. “Is Lance in some sort of trouble? Did he get hurt or something?”

Chief Sanda pursed her lips for a moment, and her gaze carefully considered each of them; to Keith, it came with a strange pins and needles sensation that broke over his arms and legs and the back of his neck in a horribly unpleasant way. It was fairly similar to the first time his Mom had caught him smoking. Guilt, shame, belated recognition, all twisted together in a knot at the base of his stomach.

“We’re still investigating, but if it would help you to gather your thoughts, Mr. McClain’s family reported him this morning as missing.”

_Missing._

That one word, just two syllables, coalesced heavily in the air, weighing down the room like the strike of noon at the height of a clocktower, reverberating in dappled waves in the quiet office. A tangible thing, Keith felt his stomach roil as the meaning behind the woman’s statement took root in the base of his gut.

“Lance is... missing.” He repeated, the words ringing hollow. Keith genuinely wasn’t able to make sense of the words, like she’d spoken a different language and he had to conjugate and translate the sentence in his head.

“He’s… _missing?_ ”

“We are just trying to gather information at this point. Nothing is confirmed, which is _why,_ if you would all stay calm and answer my questions, we can get a better grip on what happened.”

No one so much as _breathed_ in anticipation for her to continue.

“This morning, Rosa McClain and two of her children came to the station. They said their youngest, Lance McClain, spent yesterday evening with you all, plus Matthew Holt, between the hours of six and nine-thirty pm, at which point he was supposed to leave the Holt residence and return to his house. Is that correct?”

“Yes, ma’am,” supplied Shiro, and Keith glanced up at him. His voice sounded tight, but his expression was schooled into an inscrutable mask. “Keith and I were the last to see him, I think. Keith was going to give him… give him a ride home, but we got a call from the hospital that our mother had gotten injured at work so we both went straight there.”

“Do any of you remember him acting unusual at all?”

Pidge and Hunk both shot Keith a look, but their gazes remained unseen as he kept his own focus trained on a cigarette hole burnt into his left glove.

It was Shiro who eventually nudged him into speak.

“Well, Keith and Lance stepped outside shortly before he left to talk. Do you remember anything in particular, Keith?”

The woman’s steely gaze flashed to him, her lip-curling in obvious distaste. Given her occupation and Keith’s reputation, let it suffice to say the two of them were on… _familiar_ terms.

Keith chewed his words, considering each one carefully.

“He seemed... okay, but he also said he wasn’t feeling very well. During our session, he zoned out a couple of times and… well, we kind of were a little hard on him about messing up something with the campaign, but even that he seemed to get over pretty easily.”

Before she had the chance to ask him to elaborate, Hunk cut in, “He’s referring to a tabletop board game we all play, Monsters & Mana.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Keith nodded his assent to Hunk’s statement. “We talked for a little while and he did seem sort of... upset? For a bit, anyway, but he just said he was feeling kind of sick. By the time we were done talking, maybe like, ten or fifteen minutes later, he seemed like he was almost completely back to normal.”

Chief Sanda nodded, pulling out a small notepad from her pocket and flipping through the pages. “And when Lance goes home, what route does he take?”

“Chillicothe to Joseph Street. I probably don’t need to tell you he lives off Fairview.” Pidge replied, her tone somewhere between cold and outright hostile.

If Sanda noticed anything bitter about the exchange, she didn’t comment. “That’s what Mrs. McClain believed as well. Do you remember if he was wearing anything particular, anything that would help identify him?”

Without thinking, Keith supplied an immediate answer. “A dark blue turtleneck, jeans, and his olive green bomber jacket. It’s got orange patches on the arms and has a hood, and it’s a little long. Tennis shoes.”

There was a brief pause, long enough for him to realize that everyone was looking at him pointedly, and Keith flushed bright red.

“W-We had a conversation about that sweater last night, so I remember. When we were talking, it was just about stupid stuff. School, clothes, that sort of thing. He was asking me if I was going to go to Robotics today… it was all pretty normal stuff. I was going to give him a ride home when Shiro came and found me.”

The officer’s expression was borderline apathetic as she met Keith’s gaze.

“He didn’t mention any sort of ideation towards harming himself? Running away?”

Hunk practically leapt in his seat. “No! No way. Lance wouldn’t run away from home, and he definitely wouldn’t hurt himself on purpose.”

The woman’s mouth twisted down at the corners. “Is it at possible he was inebriated during your time with him yesterday? Was he taking any sort of medication, were any of you drinking? Getting high?”

“Hey, fuck off,” Keith spat, ignoring the warning Shiro whispered at his side. “Lance didn’t get drunk or doped up and get lost on his way home! If you’re saying he’s missing, then something happened to him.”

“Forgive my brother’s crude language,” Shiro amended with a sigh. “But he’s right, Lance isn’t like that at all. He’s always very honest with us, and as far as I know he’s only had alcohol once in his life, and it certainly wasn’t last night. No drug use, smoking, anything like that though.”

“Of course not,” Chief Sanda replied in such an overtly dismissive, utterly unconvinced, tone, Keith was sincerely ready to tell her to fuck right off again. “His family says you are all his closest friends, but that he has other friends – Rolo Reedus and Nyma Chabert? We’ve seen the two of them a lot at the office.”

While she didn’t outright ask, “ _did he piss off a drug dealer?_ ”, the implication was clear as fucking natural mountain spring water. Keith ground his teeth together

“Lance isn’t some pothead, if that’s what you’re asking,” Pidge muttered, clearly miffed. “He _acts_ stupid sometimes, but he’s not dumb enough to get blazed and walk home alone.”

“Do you know if he was having disagreements with anyone? Anyone who might have wanted to try to scare him, maybe intercepted him on his way home?”

Shiro shook his head. Shiro caught on as well, judging by the fact that he stepped in while Pidge passed Hunk a tissue. “Lance really gets along pretty well with everyone. I mean, I’ve heard some people think he’s ‘annoying’ because he has a tendency to be loud, but no one’s ever really disliked him so much it would be an issue. Definitely not enough to mess with him like that.”

There was a pause, and Keith felt Pidge shift uneasily beside him. “Well… that’s… not entirely true.”

Shiro and Keith both turned fully in place, brows raised; the expression was so strikingly similar, they looked like genuine siblings for once.

“What do you mean?” Shiro asked before Chief Shada even had the chance, and Hunk squirmed uncomfortably.

It took Pidge sighing and elbowing their dark-skinned friend to get an answer out. “We really should tell them, Lance would understand. Okay?”

“Y-Yeah, I know I just…” Hunk let out a low exhale. “Lance has sort of had some... _issues_ with James Griffin this semester. Moreso than normal, anyway.”

Keith’s jaw snapped together so tightly, his teeth began to ache.

“ _What?_ ”

“This is why Lance didn’t want to tell you guys. He knew you’d get involved or upset,” Pidge shot right back.

She turned her attention to Chief Sanda. “James Griffin is a total dick to Lance, but I honestly doubt he would do anything to mess with Lance in a _serious_ way. But to be fair, he has been antagonizing Lance these past couple months… basically whenever he can find him and Keith isn’t around. He’s called him a fag and thrown his bookbag in the dumpster and shit like that. There’s sometimes mean things written in notes slipped in his locker, too – I don’t know if those are James or not, but it seems like it could be? And, he’s never done anything physical… besides push him, I guess… but Lance insisted it wasn’t a big deal. Like, I don’t know, I told him to talk to Mr. Smythe about it or Ms. Ryder, but…  he would get upset whenever Hunk or I brought it up.”

Hunk nodded, shooting a furtive look of apology towards Keith and Shiro. “Lance made us promise not to tell you guys. I dunno, he had a real problem with being perceived as a... a _burden_ on other people. I don’t think he wanted you to stand up for him anymore than you already do? And since James and Keith sort of have a history,” Hunk paused, euphemistically referring to the time he punched Griffin square in his jaw, and the other time they got into a fight in the parking lot about something dumb that drew a crowd. “He doesn’t bother us most of the time but there are some days that are sort of… bad. And like, James is a total jerk to us too, but I don’t know, it feels more… _mean_ when it’s towards Lance. Definitely more personal.”

Keith tasted copper and warmth in his mouth, realized he’d been biting his tongue with such violence it had actually drawn blood. Around the edge of the office, the walls and decor seemed to have taken on a red-tint.

Chief Sanda looked doubtfully over her notes, at the teenagers, and then back again. She quietly went through this process for almost two whole, uncomfortable minutes.

“Now then,” she flipped the cover of the notepad back over and tucked it out of sight again.

“I believe that was all we had to ask. You are all to go home, right now, with the exception of Mr. Shirogane – coach still wants you to practice, but you are to wait inside the school with at least one teammate while waiting for a family member to pick you up.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Pidge demanded, not moving an inch, her words unapologetically sharp. “We can show you the route he takes normally, or –”

Chief Sanda didn’t even let her finish. “If you want to be helpful, then go straight home after this. My team is working on this, the last thing we need is for a bunch of kids to get involved.”

After the “interview,” was over, Chief Sanda and her croony officer left the school without bothering to talk to anyone else. They didn’t take a single note on anything the four of them had to say, didn’t share a phone number to reach out to if they heard anything – basically, they didn’t do _shit_. He would be genuinely surprised if Sanda even had anything already written down in that shitty little notebook of her’s, or if it wasn’t just a prop for show.

That said, between the news of Griffin and the fact that the police didn’t seem to give a proper two shits about Lance’s disappearance, Keith was unsurprisingly and justifiably _pissed._

Chief Sanda was the head of an all-white police force in a god-fearing town with a great legacy of all-American patriotism. The people here tolerated Hunk’s family since they’d lived here for at least two generations, even admired the Adam’s family for their _mixed_ heritage as being new and progressive, but Lance’s family – they were _immigrants_. “Mexicans,” as far as most people of this town were concerned, and Keith was reminded of it the all too often Lance’s locker would be vandalized with slurs, or would discover that his stuff had been fucked with when Keith wasn’t around.

Anonymous bullying was one thing, and Keith hated it, but it wasn’t like he could do anything about that besides be sympathetic and help Lance clean it up or replace what was broken or damaged.

He hadn’t known about Griffin’s more recent involvement, though.

Principal Ryner spoke with them briefly and encouraged them to see the school counselor if they were having any difficulties processing Lance’s absence, and as soon as they were rightfully released, the four of them swung around the corner at the other end of the hallway and crowded together. There weren’t very many people left wandering the school at this hour, rather occupying a classroom for a club or out on the practice fields for their various athletic commitments, but they kept their voice down anyway.

“I wish you guys would have fucking said something if Griffin was fucking with Lance,” Keith muttered, and while he didn’t strictly _blame_ them, he was angry and wanted to be mad at something. “I can’t believe I didn’t know. I should have –”

“What? Get in _another_ fight with James?” Shiro interrupted, gripping his upper-arm in a way that hinted at a warning. “Of course I’m upset too, Keith, but if it meant you getting suspended for a week because you can’t control your anger, then can you really _blame_ him for not telling you? Don’t get mad at Hunk and Pidge for this.”

The so-named pair shared an awkward glance, but didn’t move to disagree. Frustrated, Keith ground his heel into the ground.

“Fuck, yeah, I know. I know, I’m just – none of you _deserve_ this shit, and if I can do something by being there, then I want to be able to help. Is that so wrong?”

“ _No,”_ Pidge’s voice was hard as steel, gaze flickering up to meet his own. “ _But_ you’re also not doing Lance any favors by making extra enemies. People know you hang out with us, so they start to dislike us by association. I’m pretty sure James only started to really target Lance because he _knew_ it would piss you off.”

Keith flinched like she’d slapped him. In a way, he supposed, she had.

Hunk softened the impact by resting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing. “I’m sorry, man. I guess I… get his reasoning, too? Like, think about Lance, do _you_ think he wants to tell you that he’s getting shit from James _because_ of you? That’s like, really bad in a different way. I totally don’t think Lance should have been put in the position in the first place, you know? But like, having you get involved just would have escalated the situation.”

“I…” his fists were tight, and with a sudden punch of guilt in his gut he looked down and away. Keith let out a sigh. “You’re right. Fuck, I’m… sorry. I’m just freaking out right now, and my anxiety is going crazy, and what the _fuck_ was Sanda even talking about – running away from home? I wasn’t the only one who noticed how she was trying to, like, talk about Lance doing drugs and shit, right?”

Lips pursed, Pidge glanced around before agreeing. “It’s _bullshit_. I’d bet money that if Griffin or Luxia or any of the other fuckin’ preps went missing they’d have turned the whole fucking town over by now.”

“Hey, hey, cool it, both of you.” Shiro held up two hands in front of his chest. “Getting angry isn’t going to help. We can’t really do anything right this very minute, but we should definitely try brainstorm where Lance might have gone. We can talk later, but I’ve got to get to practice.”

He turned away, but stopped and turned to offer them all a measured look. “He’s going to be okay, guys. If it’s just a misunderstanding and he ended up getting locked in a closet or something, we can yell at him together over it. And if it’s not… it’s not like he would just give up. So we can’t either, okay?”

“Thanks, Shiro,” Keith returned the smile with a threadbare version of his own, and Hunk and Pidge echoed the same sentiment as he began to walk towards the practice fields.

Sniffling, Hunk wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I guess we should head out and wait for our parents?”

“Right, okay,” Keith nodded before glancing towards Pidge. She was bobbing her head, but didn’t appear to be listening. Her gaze seemed far-off, thoughtful.

“Pidge?”

“Oh, uh, sorry. I was just thinking about something Shiro said, I guess.” Carding a hand through her hair, there was a certain frazzled look about her that, honestly, wasn’t that uncommon for Pidge. She began to lead them towards the front doors of the school. “If Lance went somewhere on his own, where would he go? I mean, most places he needs a car, but just theoretically? The police didn’t ask about any places we suspected he could have gone which is… shitty and stupid. It feels like the very first thing they should have asked, but whatever.”

Hunk rubbed his chin for a moment. “Well, if he didn’t have his wallet, he couldn’t have gone anywhere he’d have to pay. Like a restaurant or the roller rink or something. Technically you don’t need money to go _to_ the arcade, though there’s not much you can do there but watch… Same with the mall, or the record store. Is the mall even open that late on a Sunday?”

“Maybe… I can’t remember the hours.” Pidge answered. “Matt’s the one picking me up today, and if I tell him what’s going on I’m sure he’d be willing to look into things.”

“We could split up,” Keith offered, burying his hands in his jacket pocket, playing with the lid of his lighter as they stepped outside. “If Matt can drop me off at your place, I grab my bike and check the few places in Daibaazal he might go. You guys could go and check Balmera?”

“Yeah, that could work.” Pidge glanced at her watch. “I’ll get Matt on board, don’t worry.”

Both Keith and Pidge waited for Hunk to inevitably chime in and talk them down on the idea, but, to their joint surprise, the other teen simply looked between them, decidedly resolute.

“Uh, Hunk?” Keith asked.

“Yeah…?” the other boy quizzed, sounding equally confused.

Pidge spoke after a moment’s silence. “...You’re not going to try to talk us out of this?”

“Uh, no?” He blinked, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Lance and I have been best buds since his family moved here. I can deal with being grounded for awhile if it’ll help find him. This is way more important.”

“Oh. Well, okay then.” Keith said, and they all looked up to the sound of the familiar Holt volkswagen pulling into the school, a grinning Matt Holt waving from the front seat. “After dinner. Meet up at where Joseph meets Fairview at 8:30, see if anyone’s come up with anything?”

“Sounds good.”

 

* * *

 

_Daibaazal, Indiana_

_December 18th, 1981_

_4:25 pm (16:25)_

 

“That’s three wins to zero,” Keith let out a huff of air even as the last of his _Galaga_ fighters was blown to pieces – not that he really did anything strenuous, it was more for the satisfying sense of _victory_ – and he watch his the numbers on his score climb higher and higher. He turned to Lance with at least a tiny bit of smugness edging into his smile. “Ready to give up, Sharpshooter?”

“S-Shut up!” Lance hissed, already loading up the machine two more quarters. “Again.”

Keith rolled his eyes, allowing Lance get the game set up as he glanced over his shoulder.

Garrison wasn’t populated enough to have its own arcade, which sucked, but Daibaazal was just one quick skip over the overpass by the McDonalds. As such, newly licensed Matthew Holt had elected to drive them all over together in their parent’s van, and said Holt was currently behind them at the end of another row of cabinets, evidently thrashing the existing _Frogger_ high score. A small group of people had begun to gather and watch him… _frog_ his way across a pixelated highway. The man was truly a true hero.

To their left, Pidge and Hunk were partnered up on _Stargate_ to the surprise of _no one_ (they basically had reserved rights to the cabinet), Shiro standing behind them admiring the round of play and, more than likely, waiting for _Tempest_ to free up. A few other familiar faces who frequented the arcade were around, presumably soaking up the warmth and the shared freedom of winter break.

“Ready to lose, Mullet?” Lance chimed beside him, and Keith looked back to see that his usual cheeky grin had turned outright wicked. If Lance was a little on the manic side during their usual activities, _competitive_ Lance was a whole other plane of wild – not that it was necessarily a bad thing. He was just… more _intense_ this way. His blue eyes were focused, flashing with humor and arrogance in a weirdly flattering way, ready to out-pilot Keith even if it cost him his last quarter.

Keith rolled his eyes. “With you at the helm? Oh, yeah, I’m _terrified_.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance scoffed, eyes now intent on the screen as the game cued up. “Just you wait, I got this.”

Lance, invariably, did not “have it,” and after two more devastating defeats, he sulked for the entire remainder of their outing. In a peace offering, Keith went next door to the small cafe and bought the both of them hot chocolate while waiting for the others to wrap up. It was about time they headed back, and Lance begrudgingly accepted the cup as they stood outside. (The old owner, Hawkins, had yelled at them enough to know, _“No outside drinks allowed!_ ”)

It snowed that day.

Lance cupped the hot chocolate between his hands and walked out beneath the overhang that would have kept him from the elements, taking a seat on the curb near Matt’s car. Right, because getting pelted with fat midwestern snowflakes was Keith’s _exact_ idea of a good time when there was a perfectly fine awning to stand under.

“Why are you like this?” Keith asked with a small, resigned sigh as he walked out with him.

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Lance said, smiling in such a way that suggested that he knew _exactly_ what Keith meant by that. “I’m a perfect angel.”

Unwilling to feed his ego further, Keith let out a disapproving noise as he took the seat beside him on the curb, looking out onto the street at passing traffic and gross, gray and brown roads. Snow wasn’t really that pretty in the midwest; it was mostly slosh and slush and salt stains. The arcade, at least, was a familiar comfort. The lights were unnatural, black and white and purples, yellows and greens, reds and blues – all manner of flashing colors reflected out of the small storefront, spilling out around their distended silhouettes across the parking lot.

Lance exhaled. It was a satisfyingly simple sound.

“I love this, you know?”

Blowing on the corner of the lid of his own drink, Keith smirked. “It’s just regular hot chocolate. I only got it because you were being a sore loser, loser.”

“I know.” Lance let out a good-natured laugh, rolling his eyes in Keith’s direction. “I meant, like, days like this. I wish everyday could be like this. You know what I mean?”

He turned his gaze to Keith, his expression earnest, open, and shockingly vulnerable for the tan-skinned teen. One half of his face was painted in a blotchy mismatch watercolor, backlit by the arcade, and his smile was almost alarmingly sincere. It was Lance without the bravado; a softer, calmer version of the usually hyper boy who was thoughtful and sensitive and insightful when he wanted to be.

Keith smiled in return. “Yeah. I think I do.”

 

* * *

 

_Garrison, Indiana_

_November 8, 1982_

_4:25 pm (16:25)_

 

Keith had barely put his bike in park before he was out of the seat, jogging up to the familiar strip mall. A mom and her two kids, presumably, were walking out of the cafe nextdoor, and he nearly ran into them. She shot him a dirty look, which Keith couldn’t even bother to feel guilty about as he pulled the door to the arcade open.

Hawkins, behind the counter, threw him a wave. “Hey, Keith – whoa, what’s going on?”

The arcade was all colorful lights and sounds of pops and buzzing electricity, already starting to fill with kids now that school was let out across the neighboring towns. Keith didn’t even pause, skirting around people and looking over the heads of shorter students, checking _Galaga_ first, then _Q*bert_ , and one of the silliest games that all them loved, _Kick_ , but…

Lance wasn’t here.

It was almost painfully obvious from the moment he walked in. There was just something about Lance – his presence was always glaringly obvious when you walked into a room and he was there. The air felt lighter or something, like he brought some the Cuban sunshine to their little slice of Americana. No bright smile, no warm laugh, no one calling out some manner of Keith’s name with an insult tagged on.

Just to be certain, he even checked the bathroom, but that too was empty. After marching back into the arcade proper, Keith was so frustrated he almost punched the _Quantum_ cabinet at the end of the last row; it had a sign posted to the front near the coin slot that read “Out of Order.”

In the darkened screen, Keith glared at his own reflection, brow knit together tightly and eyes sharp. He scrubbed a hand down his face, annoyed and, well, maybe his hands were trembling. Just a little.

“C’mon, Sharpshooter…” he said to himself, quietly. “Where _are_ you?”

Disappointed but unwilling to make a total waste of the trip, Keith stopped by the front counter to strike up a quick conversation with Hawkins. Keith apologized for running in and ignoring him and explained the situation; the man nodded, brow drawing closer and closer together as the story drew nearer to completion. By the end, his mouth was downturned and forehead creased with lines of concern and unspoken questions.

“I’m sorry, kid. Lance definitely hasn’t been here… I’ll keep an eye out if I do see him though, eh? Got a number I can reach you at?”

Keith smiled weakly and nodded, taking a pen and offered slip of paper to jot down his own number, and the McClain’s house number, down on. He labeled them both, just in case.

Thanking the arcade owner, Keith quickly ducked back outside. If he wasn’t home soon, his Mom would start to worry, so with a frustrated kick off the pavement Keith began to tear his way down the streets back towards Garrison. Ignoring the stone in his stomach, he tried not to fixate on the coils of guilt that wrapped around his ribs like spreading roots or climbing ivy, the little angry voice that kept hammering doubtful nails into the back of his head.

How was it fair that Keith was permitted to go home to his Mom? And that his Mom was just fine at home, and that his brother was just fine at football practice, when all he could imagine is Lance’s mom sitting on that bright orange sofa in their living room, phone cradled in her lap, probably speaking Spanish to her children or husband. He imagined there were a lot of tears.

It just didn’t feel fucking _fair._

The mechanics of putting his bike in the garage and taking the key out from the ignition were habitual by now. Keith hardly realized he was even home until he stepped out of his shoes and walked towards the kitchen.

“What?” Phone tucked into the crook of her shoulder, Krolia paused while cutting up some peppers. “Oh, wait, he just walked in. Let me talk to him and I’ll call you back.”

Keith paused, bike helmet still in hand. Glancing at the clock on the microwave, it was almost five pm. Shiro still wouldn’t be home from practice for another hour.

He raised a brow, and his Mom maneuvered the phone back onto the receiver.

“What is it?”

“Well, that was Veronica.” She frowned down at the food she’d been preparing, taking her knife back up again. “We had a message on the machine from Rosa while I was out shopping, and I just called them back. She said the police might be coming over to talk about Lance – it was almost impossible to understand her. Did something happen?”

“Oh, um,” Keith kept his gaze to the floor. Everything felt like it was moving too slow, like the conversation with Sanda had been two weeks ago instead of two hours. His fingers itched for a smoke. “Chief Sanda actually came to the school to talk to all of us – Pidge, Hunk, me and Shiro. I guess they were looking for Matt, too. Lance is... missing.”

Krolia’s wrist stilled, gaze flicking up. “Missing? But you just saw him.”

Grinding his teeth together, Keith replied, “Yeah, I know. Yesterday night, I was going to give him a ride home but when Shiro and I heard what happened we came to the hospital instead. He – he didn’t go home last night, and he wasn’t at school today. We even had a test and he just… didn’t show up.”

Steadily, she resumed preparing dinner. “I’ll call them back in a minute. Are _you_ okay? Did something happen between you all last night?”

“N-No.” Keith’s voice caught, and he cleared his throat. He began to move towards the hallway, in part to avoid her probing glances. “We just had a normal session. He sort of messed up something with the campaign and we all sort of… well, ganged up on him, I guess, but he didn’t seem too affected by it. I didn’t – I didn’t think he did, anyway. I don’t know. I’m…”

“Hey, hey,” Krolia interrupted, and Keith hadn’t realized when she’d stepped up behind him. A hand patted his shoulder and she pulled him into a sideways squeeze. “Just take a few deep breaths, kiddo. If the police are on it, then I’m sure they’ll find out what happened.”

“But, Mom, Sanda –”

“ _Chief_ Sanda,” she corrected with a light wack against the back of his head.

“Fine, _Chief_ Sanda, barely even seemed to care about what we had to say _at all_. I don’t think the police are even doing anything beyond the ‘due diligence’ shit they _have_ to do. She didn’t take a single note, didn’t record anything we had to say. She didn’t ask us anything about Lance’s habits otherwise though, like if he would have been somewhere else besides school, and I don’t think she was even listening when we told her that Lance isn’t the type to do drugs. She just, like, brushed Shiro off completely. And you _know_ how she feels about me.”

The woman nodded slowly. “Well, that… that does explain some of Veronica’s questions, she seemed really distressed. They said they talked to the ‘Sheriff’, but I’m guessing she meant Sanda, and just had some questions on what Marmora knows about missing persons cases. I’ll call back and tell them what I know, maybe see if we can help. Why don’t you go set your stuff down and you can help me finish dinner before Takashi gets home?”

After another brief squeeze, she released him and went back to preparing dinner. Keith turned and started towards his room down the hall, his bones feeling like heavy burdens he had to drag along with him.

Irritably, he tossed his bookbag in the corner and dropped back onto his bed, pushing the palms of his hands into his eyes. He couldn’t just sit and do _nothing_ , couldn’t just _wait_ and _hope_ while a bunch of stupid police officers take their goddamn time combing the woods and the checking around town for him. His Mother was trying to help, but like fucking hell he was going to go and help _make dinner_ while Lance could be out there, hurt, or worse –

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Keith couldn’t even begin to entertain _that_ possibility, the mere thought causing his throat to close up.

Groaning, he stared at his ceiling, eyes tracing a water stain on the tiles.

He could have driven Lance home last night. He could’ve snuffed out his cigarette, or forgone the stupid fucking thing entirely and just driven him home before Mom even called the Holt’s house.

The difference five fucking minutes could make.

If he’d just been five minutes faster, he would have dropped Lance off at the end of his driveway, smiled when he said goodbye. He’d have heard Lance’s voice coming from up on the bleachers in the morning, and would have caught glimpses of him poutting his way through Iverson’s test.

Unconsciously, Keith’s hands had clenched to tight fists, arms shaking with the urge to stop from hitting something or snatching his lighter from his pocket or jumping the fuck out of his window and heading over to the McClain’s house right that minute – because this was just fucking _ridiculous_.

How could something like this even _happen_?

Things like this _don’t_ happen in Garrison, Indiana, and they’re not _supposed_ to happen to good, smart, warm people – people who bring life to dull hallways, people who can make even socially inept people like Keith feel welcomed.

Things like this… they can’t happen to people like Lance. They _can’t_. If someone as genuine and kind as Lance could go _missing_ , then what the fuck was the point of any of this? What were they even wasting their time for, if fucking terrible things were going to happen to good fucking people no matter what?

And then, he thought about last night, and Keith felt his heart start to race, his face flood with Lance’s favorite fucking color – because of course he knew Lance’s favorite color was red, just like Lance knew his own favorite color was blue.

_Lance, listen, I…_

_I like you._

Maybe that’s what he would have said, if Shiro hadn’t interrupted. Maybe he would have just went for it and kissed Lance like he really wanted to.

After all, it was _too_ easy for Keith to recall the slight flush of his dark skin, or the way his freckles smattered his nose like the stars overhead, or how soft and fond his smile looked beneath moonlight. Blue eyes and a laugh that was a salt-sea breeze over the beach, with smooth waves and gritty sand – loud and bold and warm – indulgent and boundless and entirely _Lance._

A gut-punch thought came to him with such alarming force, Keith was sure he’d had been dazed were he to try to stand up.

 _What if he never hears that laugh again_?

...

Keith was going to find him. Find him and punch him for making them worry, and apologize, and smooth back his stupid curled bangs and make sure he wasn’t hurt. And then, he would hug him, because even though Keith doesn’t even really like hugs, hugs from people like Lance were okay, and hugs from _Lance_ were better than okay. He’d endure any amount of teasing and joking at his own expense, whether it be for his flashy choice of motorcycle or the stink of smoke that had settled into his clothes or his long, unkempt hair – Keith would bare whatever shitty jokes Lance would make if it would make him laugh again.

Keith would find him.

He _had_ to.

 

* * *

 

_Balmera, Indiana_

_November 8, 1982_

_5:01 PM (17:01)_

 

“Hey, slow down there, princess.” Alfor sighed, resting his chin into his knuckles as he watched the girl scarf down the Monday special. Business had been slow, so he decided to let her sit out in the main part of the restaurant.

“Princess?” she echoed, the first word he’d heard her say all day. That was a good sign.

Humming, he quirked a small smile when she began to eat at a pace less likely to choke her. “So I’m guessing you won’t be able to pay for that. How about instead you tell me your name? Maybe how old you are?”

Her hand stopped in mid air, ready to take a bite, but pulled back the spoon with her lips downturned.

Her gaze narrowed, but she didn’t look particularly angry – almost upset, an expression twinged by regret.

“I… don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Clearing his throat, Alfor tried to recall what he learned from minoring in social work. “Oh, well, that’s okay. What can you tell me, princess?”

“That word.” She wrinkled her nose after taking a bite. “What does it mean?”

Alfor raised a brow, considering how best to respond. “A princess is the son of a king, usually, like in the old fairy tales. Do you know what a king is?”

Shyly, she shook her head.

“A king is a man who a lot of people put their trust in, like, someone who people will listen to and take orders from. He sometimes leads an army and he lives in a big castle,” he chuckled at the end, raising across the table to tousle her shaved-head. His hand froze when she flinched, and he drew it back with an apologetic smile instead.

“‘Princess’ is just a nickname. I had a little girl who's probably about your age now, I used to call her my little princess when she was a baby. It’s just a habit.”

The girl said nothing, but she did resume eating. Alfor glanced at the clock on the opposite wall, grateful that social services had been so responsive. They’d make sure this girl got the care she needed, maybe something to help hide those… strange tattoos under her eyes. They didn’t appear to be fresh, no raised skin or red inflammation surrounding the marks. A shiver ran up the man’s spine, though. He wondered how long she’d had them – and he wondered if he really wanted to know the answer.

He allowed her to finish the rest of her meal in peace for the most part, asking only another stray question or two. Her responses were all soft-spoken but earnest, and the according accent made him wonder how she’d come to be here in the first place. Just as she was finishing, he heard the familiar roll of tires tread over the parking lot, and a quick peek outside alerted him that the social services had arrived.

“Hey, kid, just give me one second, okay? There’s some nice people here who will want to help you, and maybe ask you a few questions. I’m going to go talk to them first, so just sit tight, okay?”

She nodded and gave Alfor the sincerest smile he’d seen since he’d first found her stealing food from behind the restaurant. With a nod, he stepped out the front door.

The girl listened to the slight hum of fluorescent lights overhead and the buzzing chatter on the radio – she didn’t care much for that at all – and waited patiently for the nice man to return.

It was exactly sixteen ticks later that the resounding sound of a gunshot ran through the air, and her head snapped up towards the front door. Her heart, lightning-quick, began to thrum madly in her chest, and she leapt up from the stool. Instincts screaming at her, she cursed an apology and made a dash towards the back door.

She ran barefoot through the woods, calls of adult voices sounding off behind her, and she kept running til her lungs ached and her ankles were covered in scratches from the underbrush. She ran until there was no way to tell which way was The Home and which road she’d followed to get there, and she ran until the water-running from her eyes was indistinguishable from cold, dry air or fully begotten tears.

And then, she ran some more.

 

* * *

 

_Garrison, Indiana_

_November 8, 1982_

_8:32 pm (20:32)_

 

Opening the garage door quietly, was, in effect, an oxymoron.

He really shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d been caught trying to sneak out, but he still managed to startle when a hand came down on his shoulder at the end of their driveway.

When he spotted who the hand belonged to, however, Keith grit his teeth.

Dinner had been… tense. Shiro hadn’t had much to say as far as practice went, and even less on the subject of Lance, so it was mostly their Mom just quizzing them on the most trivial things imaginable. Keith recognized she was trying to keep their mind off of it, but it didn’t actually do anything but test his patience.

“So no Adam tonight, hmm?”

“No. It seemed like a bad idea with everything going on with…” Shiro’s voice trailed off, glancing to Keith.

“What, Lance? You can say his name. He’s not dead.”

His brother had looked annoyed by the insinuation, and Keith was in too bad of a mood to care.

“I — I didn’t mean that. I was trying to be sensitive on the issue.”

Keith had snorted. “And stepping over his name like glass is supposed to be sensitive?”

“Keith,” his mother had warned. “Enough.”

“You really shouldn’t go out right now,” Shiro said in a I’m-disappointed-in-you sort of way.

Barely sparing his brother a glance, Keith shot back, “Yeah, well, I shouldn’t do a lot of shit Shiro, isn’t that what you and Mom are always lecturing me about?”

A small look of hurt flashed on the older brother’s face, and Keith looked away, refusing to accept to little twist of guilt that nagged at his chest. “I already said I’d meet Pidge and Hunk, and I won’t ditch them. We’re going to look for Lance.”

“I figured as much,” Shiro said with a resigned sigh, picking at the corner of his hooded sweatshirt. “I just don’t want you or them to get hurt – Lance wouldn’t want any of you to put yourself at risk if something _is_ wrong with him. It makes more sense to come up with ways to help the police’s investigation and the McClain family rather then just head out and try to find him in the woods. It’s not too late to call it off, you’ve got those walkie-talkie things still right?”

“Would you, like, fuck off dude? If you’re not going to help look for Lance then you’re just as much a part of the problem as Sanda.”

Softly, Shiro smiled. “I know you’re worried. I am too.”

“ _Are_ you, Shiro?” Keith snapped, his last wit spent. “Or are you so fucking in love and happy with Adam that you’re not even worried? You seemed to breeze off to football practice pretty fucking easy earlier, and you haven’t said shit about Lance all night! He’s your friend too – how can you _not_ want to – and after we lost _Dad_ I can’t – I can’t _lose_ anyone else Shiro.”

His words got stuck in the narrow passage of his throat, thick with sudden, stupid emotions. Keith blinked away the tears before they had the chance to spill over. “I-I know, I’m probably being dramatic but I’ve just had this _feeling_ , okay? All day. It feels like I did when Dad died. I feel like everything is just wrong and _off_ and god, what if Lance _is_ fucking dead? He – he can’t be dead, Shiro, I don’t know what – ”

The last of his words were cut off, buried in Shiro’s chest as the older brother stepped forward and drew Keith into a hug. It was as much as a tether as it was an embrace, and Keith didn’t realize how tightly wound he’d been until his wires were cut by the steady, grounding force of Shiro’s presence, and Keith’s weight fell into him like a haphazard marionette.

“Hey, shh, Keith.” A comforting hand held the back of his head, and it tipped Keith a little further over the emotional edge he’d been teetering all day. “It’s okay. We’ll figure out what happened to Lance, okay? Whether it’s us or the police or whoever. I’m sorry… I didn't mean to seem like I didn’t care. I just wanted you to be able to come to me if you needed something, I didn’t want to push you. Not after Dad.”

With a steady exhale, Shiro pulled back, holding Keith at arm’s length. Keith blinked through the mist at the corner of his eyes, but he knew Shiro saw right through him.

His gaze turned from gentle to fierce as he continued. “But I also can’t stand the idea of you or Pidge or Hunk getting hurt either. When Dad died, I lost someone I really loved too, you know? It wasn’t the same as it was for you, but… I can’t stand for something to happen to _any_ of you. Lance is like a brother to me, too, I feel like there’s so much I should have done to make sure he was taking care of himself, what with the bullies and now this. I should have been there, or we could have offered to give him a ride in Adam’s car or – or there are a million things that we could have done different. That I wish _I_ had done differently. You’re not alone in worrying about him.”

“I…” Keith bit his lip, now ashamed. “I’m sorry, Shiro. I’m just worried. I – I guess I can try to radio over to Pidge and Hunk’s house and ask them to call it off. I’m running a little late, though, they might have already left.”

At that, Shiro sighed, running his fingers through his tuft of hair before resting his hands on his hips. He wore a small, knowing smile.

“I still don’t agree, but I’d rather you not go unsupervised. Mom will go easy on you if I tag along, too.”

The corner of Keith’s mouth tugged up at the corner, and he glanced down to where he’d wheeled his bike. “You okay riding with me?”

Shiro shrugged, rolling his eyes with a bit of humor. “I guess if I die looking for Lance, it’ll be for a good cause.”

With that, Keith continued to wheel the bike towards the end of the street (so he could start it without alerting the whole neighborhood), and Shiro jogged to catch up after doubling back to grab a spare helmet.

Quickly, Keith threw his leg over the seat of his bike and allowed for as much room for Shiro’s sake before they set off towards Lance’s street. The roads were quiet, unsurprisingly so, but it felt eerie on that particular evening. Very… _final_ , somehow. More than a handful of times, the street lights or even the power at the school when they passed seem to pulse, and there was a heaviness in the atmosphere that always came with the promise of a coming rain.

They spotted Pidge and Hunk standing on the side of the road, and were it not such a small, residential street, Keith could have mistaken them for hitchhikers. Keith flashed his lights as he slowed down, and he felt Shiro adjust to wave as they came to a stop.

“Shiro? Wow.” Hunk grinned appreciatively. “I’m surprised you came. Please don’t be mad at us?”

“I’ve already talked to him,” Keith said as he carefully wheeled Red off the road, parking her securely in the underbrush of where the grass met the tree line. “He’s going to help us.”

“And make sure you don’t do anything that puts yourselves in danger,” Shiro added with an edge of severity. “I’m worried about Lance too, but disobeying the police is just asking to make the whole thing more complicated. Let’s just stick together, okay? The first sign of something bad, and I’m calling it and we go back.”

Pidge mumbled something that Keith didn’t catch, but he didn’t bother. His eyes were already squinting into the crisscross of black and brown branches, sparse of leaves but for those that clumped over the forest floor. Absently, he reached around his jacket pocket for the flashlight he’d brought, and flicked it on.

“Let’s not waste any more time, okay?” he called over his shoulder. “Come on.”

As a unit, then, they moved into the forest. Hunk and Shiro stuck closer together in the back, and Keith and Pidge took up the lead in the front.

“Did you get the chance to look at anything in Balmera?” Keith asked.

Pidge wrinkled her nose before answering. “Yes and no. The diner was closed, it looked like there was police there already. I guess maybe his Mom or someone said to look there? We didn’t want to crowd the place though. We _did_ check the rink, and a few places in the strip mall, but we had to get back pretty quick. No one said they’d seen him.”

“Same with Daibaazal. The arcade had a decent number of people, but…”

They took turns swapping information – or the lack thereof – they’d found on separate sides of their town. The conversation took up about ten minutes while they slowly worked their way through overgrown roots, flashlights and peeks of filtered moonlight through the overhead, barren branches as their guides.

Hunk was the one who saw it.

“W-wait, guys! I think that’s – oh, oh, god oh no, oh no – “ his flashlight beam wobbled in his shaking hands, breaking from their solidly-forward path and scuttling towards a bush and a fallen log.

Shiro, Pidge and Keith were only a heartbeat behind him though, rushing up and eyes falling on the familiar image.

A well-worn, comfortable, familiar olive green jacket sat crumpled on the ground. Keith’s stomach turned with the urge to throw up.

“Oh my god. He was _right here_.” Pidge breathed words into the reality that crashed all down around them.

Without skipping a beat, Shiro spun around and began yelling as loud as he could.

“ _Lance?! Lance are you there! Lance, it’s us!”_

Keith had taken the jacket in his grip, a mix between relieved and disbelieved – Lance had been right _here_. It was his jacket, the one he _always_ wore, that Keith had seen him in – gods, only _yesterday_ night!

But that meant that Lance had been right here, too. And he’d taken off his jacket, and had gone way off the road, and, most importantly, he wasn’t here now.

Keith’s grip tightened on both jacket and flashlight, holding the former close to his chest and wheeling around.

“C’mon, Lance. Where _are_ you?”

Hunk and Pidge had joined in the alarmed shouting, lights spearing through the darkened forest in a dizzying flash of back and forth, no rhyme or reason to the momentary action of panic.

“G-Guys, I found… something.” Shiro sounded off to one side, but his voice wasn’t excited or even fearful – mostly, he just sounded confused.

Still, Keith was not hesitating given the circumstances. He looked over the log and the bush one more time, like if he willed the stupid sight hard enough Lance would just materialize, but turned away and jogged after the others.

“W-Who’s there?” he heard a voice say, a new one – female, and… what was that accent? _British_? “Please, go away and I won’t have to hurt you.”

Keith blinked around, followed the beams of the others flashlight to a nearby tree. Sheltered around the massive trunk, a dark-skinned face of a girl with a buzz cut peeked around the corner, her blue eyes wide and sharp. There were flecks of purple in their depths, and she had angular tattoos beneath her eyes.

Shiro carefully raised his hands in a passive, unassuming manner. “Hurt us? No, no, we’re looking for a friend – we don’t mean you any harm. Maybe you’ve… seen our friend?”

“No. I don’t know your friend, now go away. Please. There are… bad men, looking for me. They will hurt you if they find you.”

“Wait, whose hurting who now?” Hunk cut in, alarmed. “So you _and_ these… bad guys… will hurt us? Who is after you?”

Louder than before, she shouted at them, “I don’t know! Please, just go away!”

All of them froze, however, when beams of light came back through the forest _towards_ them. Voices followed soon after, and the girl let out a terrible sob. It wasn’t tearful, but _exhausted_ , like she’d sooner die than deal with whoever it was across their stretch of forest.

“They’re here. I – _you must go_.”

“Wait!” Keith stepped forward on impulse, still hold Lance’s jacket in one hand. (As if Keith was going give it up anytime soon.) His adrenaline had spiked, flooding his senses, and his instincts were screaming at him to act, to _do_ something.

“Come with us. Maybe we can help you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now to just finish the epilogue of star-crossed... 👀


	3. Tipping Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang learns a bit more about their strange new friend, and redouble their efforts to find Lance. Keith and Pidge skip school, and Hunk is not coping very well.

_Garrison, Indiana_

_November 8, 1982_

_9:25 pm (21:25)_

 

A sudden rain drove into the Garrison city limits with the exact sort of cold fury that would chase away the feeling in your fingertips; the sort of weather your mother would scold you over being caught in without a jacket. The storm rumbled, groaning the moment it broke over treetops, pittered and pattered against roofs, raced down windows, beat down car windshields—it was steady, enough to prevent you from sinking into the darker depths of everyday troubles, while providing enough buoyancy that you didn’t float away, untethered to reality.

It was grounding. Humble, in the way it washes things clean.

In the case of four teenagers and one strange girl in a hospital gown, the rain had become a deeply unwanted nuisance while they took off from the woods and made their way back to the Holt household as fast as they could. Pidge’s house had been designated the best place to meet, in part because it was nearest, but also because it was the nicest of all their homes and could host them all the most comfortably with some illusion of privacy. After all, it would be pretty difficult to explain how they’d shown up with a young woman—maybe Shiro’s age?—with a shaved head, no clothes, and who claimed to be in danger, to anyone’s nosy parents were they to start asking questions. It certainly didn’t help their case that none of them were supposed to be out that night.

“Okay, okay, _here_. Drama queens _.”_ Pidge threw a towel and hit Keith square in the face as he tried to wring out his hair, and Hunk stood in the middle of the room with chattering teeth. Shiro tried to occupy as small a space as possible, dripping into a contained puddle near the door. The girl had wandered in the room after Hunk, eyes wide as she took in the cozy basement, studying the shelves, books, furniture. It reminded Keith of the rapture he’d seen on Lance’s face when they went to the summer fair for the first time, awestruck by the transformation of a familiar place with decorations and stands and carnival games.

Pidge interrupted the girl’s examination by offering her a towel, more gently than she had with the others. After a moment’s hesitation, she accepted, reluctantly wrapping the plush fabric over her shoulders.

Pidge slung her own towel around her neck and wiped off her glasses, glancing up the stairs. She kept her voice low.

“Alright, so… _now what?_ ”

The girl crossed her arms over her chest, averting her eyes. She said nothing.

As was their habit, the others all turned to Shiro, who was already rubbing his chin with a deeply thoughtful look furrowing his brow. After he did a quick sweep up the room, his gaze flashed to the carpet, searing holes into the floor. Keith couldn’t tell if the faint blush on his cheeks was just from the cold air or something else at first, but they soon discovered it was most definitely _something else_.

Shiro cleared his throat. “Um, well—first—I don’t know if you have any clothes that might fit her, Pidge, but we should at least give her something better to wear. That hospital gown is, um, a very... _thin_ material.”

“Oh, oh god—oh no oh no—” Hunk covered his eyes, embarrassed enough for everyone involved. “Pidge— _clothes go_ — _get now_ — _please!!!”_

Pidge rubbed her eyes tiredly, almost _bored_ , and trudged over to another corner of the basement, pulling open the dryer and sorting through a small wealth of garments. She came back moments later with a long, pale purple nightgown.

“It’s my Mom’s,” she explained, passing the strange girl the unfolded sleepwear. “She has like, four of the exact same one, so she won’t notice this one is gone for a little while.”

Expression vacant, the white-haired girl accepted the proffered clothes with a nod and began to reach behind her neck, tugging at the ties to her hospital-style gown.

A variety of gasps and groans passed around the room, and Keith had enough sense to grab her wrist before she could continue.

“Are you _actually_ insane?”

She sniffed, clearly annoyed, eyeing Keith’s hold on her arm. “Let me go.”

“You can’t just _change_ in front of us—even if you weren’t a stranger, it’s just— _weird_? Girls don’t change in front of guys. And Pidge doesn’t count as a girl.”

“It’s true,” Pidge agreed, and Keith released the girl’s wrist. “Shiro and Keith might be gay as rainbow confetti, but it’s just not normal social convention. So, the bathroom is over there—go change and shut the door behind you.”

The girl glanced around, confused as her blue eyes flickered from Keith, to the bathroom, to Pidge, and then back again, before quickly shuffling over to the opening and stepped into the bathroom, closing it most of the way. A small crack of light showed that it was still open, which they collectively deemed _good enough_. (Or, more specifically, not worth fighting for under the current circumstances.)

In the meantime, the four of them quickly finished drying themselves off as best they could, at least to the point where they weren’t dripping water all over the place, and gradually made their way over to the very same table they’d all gathered around just last night.

To Keith, it still felt unreal that Lance had been _right here_ , twenty-four hours ago. The empty seat next to him had never felt so _glaringly_ vacant; it actually hurt to look at it. He laid Lance’s jacket over the back of the Cuban’s usual seat to help it dry out.

The subsequent silence was awkward, any attempt at conversation stunted by the fact that they were all listening intently to every slight shift of weight upstairs, shoulders tensing everytime one of the Holts moved nearer to the staircase.

Hunk looked more stressed than Keith had ever seen him, repeatedly running his hands through his hair and causing it to stick up in every direction. His attention was zeroed in on Lance’s jacket with some strange mix of horror, skepticism, and relief, and Keith couldn’t help but empathize. The too-long olive green fabric, familiar orange patches, grey and breezy hood, the deep-set pockets—Lance was hardly ever seen without it. And, if he did leave it behind on a hot day, it’s not like they ever had to see the jacket _without_ him.

His throat felt tighten with unspoken questions, burning over all of his missed chances.

_Please be okay._

After an agonizing five minutes, they all straightened in their seats at the sound of feet finally plodding out of the bathroom. The door creaked open, _slowly_ , a drawn out gunshot reverberating off the walls and causing Keith’s skin to crawl with unease. He felt like he was in some fucking B-rate horror movie.

Shiro stood up and lightly coughed once the girl was in full view, eyeing them all warily.

In his most gentle voice, Shiro said, “If you want, you can come sit down. We just want to talk to you.”

Reluctantly, she nodded her head, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Shiro offered her the chair Matt usually took, and they all stared at one another.

Under the dingy yellow light that they’d all grown used to, Keith felt like he could get a proper look at the girl for the first time—not blinking rain out of his eyes or trying to study her expression with nothing but a flashlight pouring into her face.

The first thing that he noticed was that she looked positively _exhausted_. Haggard. Ready to drop any second. There were dark bruises blooming under the skin around her eyes—they’d been hard to notice at first on account of the light pink, angular tattoos that accented the corner of her eyes, but now that Keith had noticed, he couldn’t _unsee_ her obvious exhaustion. A small surge of sympathy coiled in his stomach, and he wondered errantly how long she’d been running from these so-called “bad men.”

That said, she seemed in surprisingly good health otherwise. Her skin was smooth and complexion rich, with high cheekbones. The shock of white, buzzed hair gave her an oddly hardened appearance in contrast to the softness of her other features. Though slender, she didn’t seem sickly thin, and he had to wonder about the hospital gown she’d worn earlier—had she left some kind of medical facility? Could it have been an asylum?

That was not exactly a reassuring thought, so Keith did what he did best and ignored the troubling possibility.

The next thing he catalogued was the inexact but unmistakable sense that the girl was _near-feral_. It wasn’t that she was particularly wild or violent, but there was a sort of innate _transience_ to her expression, the way her sharp gaze traveled the room and lingered over each doorway, the high-up, glass block windows, the stairs that led to the main floor. It was somehow calculated and instinctual both, her need to plan an escape; it gave Keith an uneasy impression of watching a caged animal.

Eventually, Hunk broke the silence. He folded his hands neatly over the table.

“Why don’t we, um, start with names? Tell us your name and we’ll tell you ours.”

“I…” the girl gripped the sleeves of the nightgown self-consciously, pulling the fabric taut. Keith noted the skin of her knuckles had paled as she continued to fidget in place. “I-I don’t know.”

“You don’t know your own name?” Shiro prompted, confused.

A sad shake of the head confirmed their collective disbelief.

After a quick glance around, Keith saw his own skepticism reflected back by Pidge, and decided to push a bit further.

He asked, “So… what do people call you?”

Her lower lip was tested between her teeth for a moment when, in a very small voice, she answered, “A nice man called me Princess a few times. I didn’t mind that.”

“Princess, then,” Hunk answered enthusiastically, evidently happy to be getting somewhere. “We can call you Princess for now. That works for me. That’s fine, _right guys_?”

Shooting a look at the others at the table, Keith, Pidge and Shiro all warily agreed. Personally, Keith didn’t give a shit what they called her. He just vehemently hoped this didn’t turn out to be a waste of time.

“Great. Soooo…” Hunk tapped his chin, before pointing his index finger at his own chest, then around the table in succession. “My name is Hunk. That’s Pidge. Her real name is Katie, but everyone calls her Pidge. The moody gay one is Keith—”

“Hey!”

“—And the taller gay one is Shiro. They’re half-brothers, same Mom, different Dad. Well, his full name is Takashi Shirogane, but Shiro is shorter and easier to say.”

The girl tiredly nodded, brow furrowed as she followed Hunk’s extended finger around the table one by one. Once he’d finished, the girl went back to chewing her bottom lip, tentatively looking around at each of them.

“Thank you, Hunk, Pidge, Keith, Shiro. For giving me somewhere to stay for now—I will be out of your way as soon as the storm is over. You’re going to be in danger if I stay here.”

“About that…” Shiro began, nervously rubbing his hands together. “Can you tell us about the bad men that were following you?”

A long pause followed, by the end of which the young woman hung her head and looked away.

“Okay…” clearing his throat, Shiro met the others’ gazes doubtfully. “So if you can’t tell us your name, or who was after you—is there anything you _can_ say?”

“Ah. I just— _ugh_.” She paused mid-sentence, grabbing the side of her temple and leaning forward, eyes screwed together tightly. “My head… could you please make that sound stop? From over there?”

“What, the radio?” Watching the Princess  gesture towards the large speakers set up in the corner, Pidge raised a brow but obediently got out of her seat. “Sure.”

“Thank you,” she breathed heavily through her nose, forehead relaxing once the noise was clicked off. To be honest, it had been so faint, Keith hadn’t even noticed it was on. “I don’t feel… very well. I’m sorry. My head is very… ah, _heavy_.”

“You can sleep all you want, _after this_ ,” Keith insisted. “But first, please, just tell us about these men you were running from. If _we_ were in danger by being near you, wouldn’t it hypothetically be possible that the ‘bad men’ who would have hurt you could have hurt our friend? If they’re as bad as you make them out to be, _would_ they have hurt him?”

At that, her face drained of color, eyes dulling for the first time. While the Princess didn’t provide any sort of verbal answer, her silence told them everything they really needed to know.

Eyes lowering to study the table, she placed her hands flat over the surface and flexed her fingers slowly, one at a time.

“I’m sorry.”

“Princess, _please._ ” Hunk said with quiet earnesty, his voice shamelessly desperate and worried. His brown eyes were burning, steady but lined by all manner of fear that Keith knew all too well. “You may not know this town, but there are different kinds of _bad adults_ here too. Adults who don’t care about our missing friend and probably aren’t going to actually try to find him. This really might not have anything to do with you and I’m prepared to accept that possibility—but we have to _try_. It might not be connected, but it _might be_. Lance is my best friend, and I owe him at least enough to exhaust every possibility.”

Something edged into the girl’s steely gaze over the course of Hunk’s plea, causing her body language to soften, an indistinguishably small change in the pinch of her brow, the bow of her lips, the hunch of her shoulders—all of it served to make her appear suddenly vulnerable. Smaller, even, like she occupied less space than she had with her walls up.

“A _best_ friend…” she mouthed, so soft-spoken it was almost inaudible. Then, glancing around to each of them, she asked,  “How is that different than just… _friend_?”

Shiro exemplified his infinite patience when answering. “A best friend is someone you trust, and you care about, and you want the best for no matter what. They are… the people you want to be around because they understand you. Best friends make you feel welcome and encourage you pursue things that make you happy.”

“Happy.” She spoke the word like it was new to her. She seemed pleased by the shape of it, the way it sounded on her lips. She tried again, this time with the faintest echo of a smile. “Things that make you… _happy_.”

“Exactly,” nodded Shiro. “And Lance is all of our best friend. He’s someone we care about a lot. So please, anything helps.”

Wordlessly, she studied her hands, picking at the skin around her fingernails. She just continued to shake her head from side to side, stare growing increasingly vacant.

Keith’s patience had very nearly run out, but he swallowed down his urge to speak for just a little longer.

Just a little longer. For Lance.

“I don’t know what to say.”

The air in his lungs felt like it vanished, suddenly short of breath as he watched the girl start to tremble in place. This was the precipice of some sort of— _something_.

“I-I want to help you. I do. But I swear, I did not see anyone in the forest. I didn’t see anyone for a long time. I don’t know how long or how far from Home I am. I don’t know… I don’t know _anything_. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m even doing here, I was just so _tired_ and this was so _stupid_ —”

Her voice broke at the end, a sudden sob shaking her shoulders.

Hunk, nearest, leaned over and put a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Hey, hey. I—you’re okay now. Just relax. We can get you somewhere safe, first thing in the morning Pidge can talk to her parents and call the police—”

“ _No!_ ” Keith, and, to their collective surprise, the girl, snapped in union. She flinched away from Hunk’s comforting gesture, meeting Keith’s eye with a flash of confusion and hostility. “No, please. They’ll take me back there. I can’t go back. Just tonight and then I will go tomorrow. You will never have to hear from me again, just _please_.”

“Oh no, you’re not just going to _leave_ ,” Keith practically growled, his gaze flickering to Lance’s seat and then back again. “There’s no fucking way we found you in the woods and Lance’s jacket like, 10 feet apart by coincidence. There has to be a reason. You need to tell us what you know.”

Jerkily, her head moved from side to side. “I don’t know—I wish I could be of more help, that I could help you find your best friend, but I don’t know… anything. I don’t know _anything_. I don’t even have one of these—these _names_. I want one. How do I get one?”

“Please, calm down.” Shiro instructed, nodding at Hunk to try comforting her again. Gently, he extended a hand, and she didn’t flinch away or shrug him off, but just sat there sucking in ragged, heaving breaths.

Pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, Pidge hummed thoughtfully. “If you didn’t see Lance, that’s okay. We could still use your help in keeping an eye out for these, er, _bad men_. If _they_ saw Lance, then we should at least have a sense of what kind of people we should look out for.”

“I… I can… I can _try_. I just… don’t want them to find me. Please, don’t try to involve yourselves with them, even if they have your friend. It’s not worth it.”

“Who are you to decide what is and isn’t worth it?” Keith challenged, raising a brow.

Pidge looked like she was about to punch someone. “Hey, Keith? We know you’re worried, but why don’t you shut the fuck up?”

“ _Please_ ,” Shiro cut in, “why don’t you try to tell us what’s going on? You have our word, what you say won’t leave this basement. The only thing we want is to help Lance, not hurt you or put you in harm’s way.”

Grinding his jaw, Keith settled for brooding with his arms crossed over his chest while he waited.

“I…” the girl began, no longer crying but still visibly shaking. She paused, took in a deep breath, and released it slowly. “Okay. Let me tell you what I can.”

Bit by bit, over the course of about twenty minutes, the Princess managed to unravel some of her reservations and explained a bit more about how she had come to be in the woods that night, though it was often confusing, and punctuated with paranoid ticks and bitten-down fingernails. By the time it was over, Keith’s stomach roiled, bile threatening to claw up his throat with an unkind and unrelenting procession of mental images.

She didn’t know her age, or her name, or where she came from besides that it was “Home.”

Home was a place filled by doctors and a man who looked over the Home with an iron fist, who had treated her kindly for a long time but started to push her too hard and too fast, and tried to make her do things she didn’t want to do. When Hunk gently encouraged  her to explain, it sounded more and more like a prison and less like human trafficking—still, not great, but she also didn’t claim any particular instances of physical or sexual abuse, so he supposed that was some kind of fucked up silver-lining.

It was clear from her recollection that she was traumatized, terrified, and, as he had earlier suspected, exhausted from running. Part of him still wanted to know what happened, if for no reason besides sick human curiosity, but those questions would have to go unanswered.

“ _Pidge!”_

They all leapt in place, and Hunk had to cover his mouth to prevent from squeaking in surprise. The Princess looked so alarmed that her eyes seemed like they were going to pop out.

Whispering a quick, _“fuck_ ,” Pidge ran up the stairs after waving frantically at them all to remain quiet.

“What’s up, Mom?” she asked, obnoxiously loud to keep the others queued in.

They listened intently, cringing at the sound of a snort. “What do you mean, _what’s up_? It’s time to get ready for bed. You’re still grounded from that stunt you pulled last week.”

Around the table, Keith and Shiro shared a nervous glance, while Hunk seemed ready for a complete meltdown any moment now. Keith tried to motion questioningly to Shiro if they should try to go, to which he shook his head and simply held a finger up to his mouth in a shushing gesture _._ The Princess had her head pointed straight-up at the ceiling, staring in confusion as if she were trying to read a map imprinted upon the spackle.

“Fair enough,” Pidge sighed, and Keith silently hoped she wasn’t being too obvious. They waited with bated breath for her to continue. “About that—I was _actually_ trying to suck up to you by folding the laundry, hoping that you might let me off the hook early. What’dya say, mother dearest?”

With almost uncanny accuracy, Keith could imagine the woman rolling her eyes and smirking through her response. “We’ll see, problem child. Finish the laundry and then we’ll talk.”

“Sweet. Be right back!” Pidge quickly and firmly closed the basement door, descending the stairs with a sheen of sweat pasting her bangs to her forehead, likely a result of stress, but her obvious relief overtook any of the sure-fire panic she’d just undergone.

“Fucking nailed it. Damn, I’m good.” Pidge swept by in a rush, fist bumping Hunk and yanking open the dryer a second time. “I bought us, like, five minutes though. So y’all need to get the fuck outta my house.”

The Princess look stricken, and, understandably, confused. “Wait, where are we going? It’s still storming and I—”

“ _You_ can stay,” Pidge cut her off, clicking her tongue. “Sleep on the couch, and don’t make a _single_ sound, and there’ll be no reason for my parents to come down here. We can finish this talk in the morning. Honestly, you look pretty exhausted anyway.”

A surprised laugh fell from the dark-skinned girl’s mouth, the sound scratchy from disuse, but it was eons more pleasant than her sobering silences or frantic crying. “I suppose I _am_ very tired. Thank you, again.”

Keith was already up and gathering his helmet, keys, and stopped to rest his hand on the back of Lance’s chair.

The jacket. _The jacket the jacket the jacket._ It pained him to imagine leaving it here, even if he had no practical use for it.

Shiro placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly, and Keith met his gaze in a silent question. Not exactly asking for permission, but checking his brother’s expression for judgement or disapproval.

Finding none, Keith tentatively took the jacket and folded it, tucking it inside his own leather one for the time being.

He promised himself he would return it to Lance soon enough.

“Okay, we’re gonna get out of here now. Like, _now-now_ , because my bike is loud and we’ll need to wheel it a little bit away.” Keith ran a hand through his hair, his mind in body at odds between exhaustion and steady panic. “Pidge, I’m going to skip tomorrow. You in?

“Definitely.”

Hunk made an offended sound, waving his hands. “Wait—wait! Are you sure that’s a good idea? Lance wouldn’t want…”

Keith sent Hunk a solitary glare, and the remainder of his argument died on his lips. If Hunk really felt like he could go to school, Keith didn’t care, that was his business. But there wasn’t a snowball's chance in hell he was about to spend another day in those shitty hallways filled with shitty people if he didn’t at least know that Lance would be there, too.

“Maybe then we can—” Keith began, turning to the Princess, only to stop speaking abruptly. In the time it had taken them to stand up and briefly discuss their next steps, the girl had fallen asleep. Sitting up, too. It looked hellishly uncomfortable, and Shiro tentatively offered to lift her and lay her down on the couch.

In an extremely awkward moment, they all sort of loomed over her sleeping body after Shiro set her down and Pidge threw a blanket over her. It felt weird and somehow invasive to just watch her, but it was also somehow… _humbling_? Like, they had been the ones to give her fresh clothes and a place to sleep. In a small, small way, it felt like they’d done _something_ , provided some small comfort. It was… nice.

As for what would happen to her next…

Voice soft, Hunk asked, “Do you guys think she might actually be... _crazy_? I don’t mean that in, like, an _offensive_ way. If she was being honest, it sounded a lot like a ward for mentally ill people…”

Shiro exhaled deeply from his nose, and Keith tried to discern what his older brother might be thinking about. His frown was deep-set, troubled and pensive both. “I really don’t know. Logically speaking, it’s all very hard to believe that a place like that could exist. But then again, with all that stuff in the news with Pennhurst, it could be a real place and she could be a real patient but… they could be mistreating her. I don’t know. Even those patients know their names, though.”

“I’m just going to guess she’s like, 17-ish,” Pidge began with a huff. “Even a place like Pennhurst wouldn’t tattoo her face. That’s just fucking _abnormal_.”

“She didn’t even mention the face tattoos,” Hunk pointed. “She could have had them for so long that she didn’t even think about it.”

“Longer than she’d had a _name_?” Keith challenged. “I feel like we’re not giving her enough credit. She seemed really scared, but not _crazy_. Whatever is going on with her, she at least _believes_ that it’s real. Even if it’s a twisted and warped sort of ‘real’, you can’t fake that kind of fear. I want to come by tomorrow and talk to her some more, is that cool, Pidge?”

“Yeah. I’ll get her something to eat in the morning and see if she can stick around for at least a little longer. She clearly wants to get a move on but if you come over early…”

“Sounds good.”

At that moment, Shiro made a point of theatrically checking his watch and then gesturing to the Holt staircase. “We won’t be doing anything, anytime soon, if Pidge’s Mom catches us. Let’s get going.”

“Right,” Keith agreed, shooting the Princess’s sleeping visage one last glance before heading for the door.

 

* * *

 

_Garrison, Indiana_

_November 9, 1982_

_3:37am (03:37)_

 

For how little he slept that night, Keith shouldn’t have even bothered going home. His nerves were completely shot, and he alternated pacing his bedroom, trying to work on his Drawing II portfolio assignment, and smoking the entire night.

Shiro, evidently, heard him stepping outside during his fifth or sixth time through the cycle and came outside to join him.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked, slippers muted over the back porch as he took a seat next to his brother at the patio table.

Keith snorted. “Can _you_?”

A very tired chuckle was his only answer. It said plenty for their fucked up circumstances.

It had been thirty-four hours, or thereabouts, since they had seen Lance. The world felt like it was dragging its feet, while around them, everything quickly fissured out into increasingly messy cracks, or, fuck, maybe he was just being stupid and dramatic. Take equal parts lack of sleep and nicotine-fueled jitters, with two parts panic to one part worry and one part fear, Keith was at least self-aware enough to realize his emotions were really twisted and warped right now.

It didn’t help that no one else seemed particularly shaken up. Skeptical, worried, fearful—sure. But Keith felt like he was losing his fucking mind, one step away from falling off the edge into—into _something._ And there wasn’t anyone around to catch him if he fell.

“I know I’m probably wasting my breath here,” Shiro hummed once Keith ashed his cigarette. “But you really shouldn’t skip school tomorrow.”

“You’re right.” Taking his time inhaling the next drag, Keith felt the heat coil in his throat while his pulse calmed considerably. “You _are_ wasting your breath.”

The older of the two sighed, taking that as a hint to drop the subject. “Fine. Will you at least tell me what you and Pidge intend to do? I won’t tell Mom, and if anyone asks I can say, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘you’re sick’ or something I just—I’m worried about you.”

Keith smiled at that, weak though it was, and looked up. “Just say you don’t know. I don’t want you to have to lie for me. As for what Pidge and I will do… well, I guess it depends on if the girl has anything else to say, doesn’t it? But—” he paused, examining his hands for a moment, watched the smoke drift up in the chilly night air. “There’s this thing. I don’t know how to explain it. Remember when I kept getting that weird feeling about that cave near the quarry?”

“Tsh. That _energy_ you were feeling?”

Keith could practically _hear_ Shiro rolling his eyes, and he grit his teeth.

“I know you thought I was out of my mind then too. Everyone did except for Lance.”

“Maybe Lance just didn’t want to make you feel bad,” Shiro suggested.

“Shut up. The point is, this like, _pull_ that I felt, that dragging sense? It’s sort of like that with her, too. I can’t even explain it, Shiro! I know it’s weird and doesn’t make any sense but I _swear—_ she’s got something to do with this. There’s got to be something else to all of this, and just look at the facts. Like, Lance going _missing_ and some crazy girl shows up less than a day later? And then finding his jacket—there’s no way this is all coincidental.”

“Okay, first of all—I don’t think it’s okay to call her _crazy_ , Keith,” said Shiro, his tone admonishing. “Especially since you’re going into conspiracy theory mode again.”

“ _I’m not_ —"

Shiro held up a hand. “Let me finish. I guess, I don't know exactly _what_ to think about it all of this. You are right about something: it definitely doesn’t seem possible that it could all be a coincidence. And I understand not wanting to go to the police after that interview with Chief Sanda—”

“ _Interview_ ,” Keith scoffed. To call that sad excuse of gathering testimony an _interview_ was genuinely insulting. “If we give them Lance’s jacket, she’ll probably just throw it in an evidence locker just so she can check off her boxes.”

Shiro gave him a pointed look, almost angry, and his words fell into the empty air and rang out like metal dropped on stone.

“Once _again_ , my point, Keith, is that I agree that something _must_ have happened to Lance. Finding his jacket… that doesn’t sit well with me. _At all._ Chief Sanda had seemed intent on writing this whole thing off as Lance getting lost or possibly running way or something, but if we bring this to them they’re much more likely to take the entire investigation more seriously.”

Lips pursed, Keith twisted his tongue between his teeth, his smoke dangling haphazardly between his lips. “Maybe…”

He couldn’t deny some truth to Shiro’s statement: the police were better equipped, had the experience and necessary resources to handle a missing persons case, more so than Keith and the others could ever hope to have. It was sensible to give them Lance’s jacket; it would elevate the urgency of the entire search, could refocus the police’s attention to the woods and the surrounding area.

Keith scratched the inside of his wrists. His lip was hurting from where he’d been biting it, almost hard enough to draw blood. If it was the best thing to do for Lance, then Keith would do that. No questions asked.

It was just… he didn’t _know_ if it was the best thing to do for Lance.

The idea of turning over what they had learned to the authorities… it left a hollow pit in his stomach. Worse than guilt, more bitter than disappointment—it was the feeling of _betrayal_. This was _Lance’s_ jacket. Giving it to the police felt as good as giving up. Was that selfish? Why did it matter to him who _had_ the jacket when the bottom line was that Lance was somewhere out there without it, _missing_?

Carding a hand roughly through his hair, unbrushed and still damp from their earlier venture in the storm, Keith tried to do his best to ignore the chill that frosted his fingertips in the late autumn air.

“You still can’t deny it would be fucked up to turn the Princess over to the police.”

Brow drawn in frustration, Shiro nodded. “I do agree with that. We can give the police Lance’s jacket and hope they take the situation more seriously, redouble the search with that place in the woods as a good lead. We can do all of that without telling them about her, she can just—go on to wherever she was headed, I guess.”

Sensing an opportunity, Keith lowered his cigarette and shot his brother a beseeching look. “Just let me hold onto his jacket until we let her go at least. If it is all connected I don’t want to risk the police getting involved and picking her up in the woods or something. Please?”

Shiro smiled at his little brother, his expression tired but not lacking in warmth.

“...Okay. We’ll hold onto what we know for now, jacket and the Princess. But if she causes trouble or the police specifically ask us about anything, we _are_ going to tell them, okay? The last thing I want is you being charged with obstruction of justice.”

“All of us would be charged, to be fair,” Keith pointed, but he too was smiling.

The older of the pair pulled a face. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“Anytime,” Keith quipped right back.

He thanked whatever higher power there might have been up there that Shiro was understanding. In truth, Keith couldn’t have cared two fucks about lying to Sanda or any of the others, but he couldn’t deal with trying to keep up a facade with Shiro.

After another few minutes, Keith pushed the butt of his cigarette into the ground and attempted to kick away some of the ash. (His mom may have begrudgingly accept that he was smoking now, but she certainly wouldn’t be happy to learn _how much_ or _how quickly_ the habit had grown into a severe dependency issue. He’d blown through an entire pack just since this morning.)

“I guess I’ll try to sleep… again,” Keith said as he stood up, and Shiro followed suit. However, he raised a doubtful brow and scrutinized his little brother’s face upon doing so.

“What?”

“Are you _actually_ going to sleep, or will I hear you pacing from upstairs?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “You act like I’m stomping around like a fucking elephant or something.”

“Oh no, elephants are much more graceful,” his brother answered before ruffling Keith’s hair affectionately, which only served to irritate him.

“Fine, fine, I’ll _actually_ try to sleep. Happy?”

“Of course.” Shiro replied, his usual pep returned as he held open the back door, gesturing for Keith to go first. More quietly, he added, “And, hey, Keith?”

“Hm?”

“I know you’re worried about him. Just… remember, we’re all on the same side here.”

The end was so softly spoken, Keith had to pause for several seconds to make sure heard it all correctly. He shook his head, let the syllables clatter around like toppled blocks in his mind, before trying for a smile that wouldn’t look pathetically exhausted.

“I know, Shiro. Thanks.”

“Good night. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

 

* * *

 

_Garrison, Indiana_

_November 9, 1982_

_6:30 am (6:30)_

 

The most shocking part of Lance’s disappearance was how little changed.

He woke up in the same way, followed the same routine, rode his bike along the same path to school.

Keith wasn’t one to be dramatic––that was more of Lance’s thing anyway––but it felt like his entire fucking life had been ripped to shreds and he’d tried to use one of those shitty, discount glue sticks that were more like purple paste than a smooth applicator to put it all back together again. The whole thing was just a mess, and yet he had to trapiezee around with some benign sense of normality for the sake of everyone else.

Of course, the lack of sleep, his missing friend, the so-called “Princess” in the Holt’s basement, and the urge to smoke all mixed together and resulted in a mood that six different kinds of fucked by the time he showed up to school. The only saving grace he had at that point was that he was about to leave again.

He stood by his bike and pulled out his lighter, unable to find the will to care about the fact that he was very openly breaking rules on school grounds––if someone wanted to come over and yell at him, it would be their fucking funeral.

To Keith’s credit, his reputation for hostility did a spectacular job at driving away unwanted interactions, social or otherwise, so no one bothered him or came over to reprimand him. Honestly, Lance was the only one he let get away with that shit on a daily basis because being annoying and doting was Lance’s strange way of showing he cared about someone; from anyone else, even Shiro, the comments were like nails on a chalkboard, and almost nothing made his fists tighten so fast as being lectured to over pointless shit.

 _Almost_ being the operative word, that is. There were a few things that pissed him off more than a holier-than-thou scolding, and the coveted first place on that particular list went to James Griffin, who’d just rolled up to school in his parent’s nice BMW. He jumped out of the driver seat and joined his group of shitty friends, and Keith felt his lip curl as he observed James laughing at some undoubtedly bigoted or racist or sexist joke, all while walking towards the double-doors like he owned the damn place.

Lance may not have wanted him to know about James and the bullying, but by letting James’s behavior go around unchecked, there was no incentive for him to ever stop. It pissed Keith right off to even think about the fact that Lance was being targeted by James _because_ of him––what kind of fucking asshole does that?

At one point, Keith recognized his teeth had begun to hurt with how badly he had been grinding his molars together, barely resisting the urge to follow James inside and to break his stupid, smug jackass jaw.

But Keith didn’t. Not today. He had too much to do today, too little time to search for Lance and talk to their strange Hospital-Princess-Friend. He couldn’t waste his time on James fucking Griffin.

Another time.

Just in time for his cigarette to reach its ember-burnt end, the familiar Holt minivan pulled into the school parking lot, and Keith began to ready his second helmet. Their group doubled-up on his bike so often anymore, Keith just made it a habit of always bringing the extra helmet along.

Pidge was before him in a matter of seconds, almost alarmingly fast for someone her size. Judging by the papery quality of her skin and sunken-in look of her eyes, Keith had to guess she slept just about as much as he did.

“You look like shit,” she said in way of greeting, to which Keith shrugged.

“Same to you.”

He tossed her the helmet, and Pidge’s hands were a blur as she swiftly hooked it over head, sections of her short hair sticking up beneath the bottom like worn down toothbrush bristles.

“Thanks. Wanna go back now or wait through morning announcements?”

“Let’s just go,” said Keith, already swinging a leg over the front of the motorcycle and inching forward just to give Pidge a little more room to be comfortable.

She said nothing, stepping over the seat and taking a moment to adjust herself. Keith felt her arms hesitantly wrap around his waist and he nodded in warning  before starting up the engine. He knew Pidge wasn’t very fond of being touched or touching other people for very long, except for the occasional hug, so he tried to make the ride back to her house swift.

“How is she, by the way?” Keith asked when he parked, wheeling the bike around to the back of the Holt’s house to keep it from view of the street. “The girl. Princess, or whatever.”

Sighing, Pidge shrugged as she followed along. “Fine, I think? She only woke up right before I left when I brought her food. She was just quiet again, calmer but like… I dunno. She’s got this look that was just, like, _empty._ ”

“Yeah…” Keith said, if only because he didn’t know what else to add.

They propped up his bike on the far side of the shed in the Holt backyard, just in case either of Pidge’s parents came home early and looked outside. While her Dad commuted to work a half-hour away, Colleen Holt was a state representative for their county and often had weird, irregular hours all around the state and was therefore a wild card.

After a quick and quiet entry, the pair headed for the basement, peeking through the doorway at the sound of voices. Pidge glanced his way, confused, and they listened intently for several seconds.

_“If he scares everyone off, what happens to the game?”_

_“There might be no more games. And I will be… forced to sell the stadium.”_

_“Then, we have to get to the bottom of this mystery, and fast!”_

“Pfft.” Pidge laughed, calling out. “Princess, it’s Pidge and Keith. I’m back.”

They descended the stairs to find the girl, seated on the floor, inches from the T.V. Shaggy and Scooby-Doo were pictured behind her, the former declaring something about solving a mystery on an empty stomach.

“This is so unusual,” she stated the moment her gaze focused on them, turning back to the T.V. and pointing at the screen. “What sort of reality is this? Why is this creature able to speak?”

Keith rolled his eyes, walking forward and switching the device off. “Another _reality_? God, no. It’s just a T.V. As in, _television._ It’s just fake, a story.”

“Oh.” She furrowed her brow, staring at the dark screen for a few seconds longer. “I didn’t realize…”

Pidge flopped down into the lounge chair, a few paces back from the T.V. Pressing the hands of her heels into her eyes, she exhaled. “So you’ve never seen a T.V. before either? What sort of place even _was_ your Home?”

She muttered something under her breath, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her chin there.

“Right, so… _anyway_.” Crossing the room quickly, Keith sank into the chair beside the couch, facing them both. “Okay. How do we do this?”

“I don’t know,” answered the girl.

“It was rhetorical,” Keith bit back, at which she just tilted her head to the side. “I mean––it wasn’t a real question. I was just thinking aloud.”

The responding raise in her eyebrows made it clear that she still didn’t _really_ understand, but he decided he really didn’t care to explain, either.

“I was wondering something,” Pidge began, standing up from the couch and moving around the basement. She began to pluck stuff down from the shelves, seemingly at random, and bringing them to the central table. “What was the tipping point, Princess?”

“The–– _what_?”

“Tipping point,” Pidge said a second time, tossing a quick glance over her shoulder. “I was thinking about this all night. This place you were in sounded awful. But what changed? Why did you run away when you did? It’s called a _tipping point_ because it’s like this.”

Picking up a pencil, Pidge turned around and laid it out, suspended over the tip of her finger. Then, just as swiftly, brought her other hand down on one side abruptly and sent it crashing over the edge. “You can balance for awhile, but eventually something changes, and you fall off. What made _you_ fall off?”

Keith was tempted to interrupt, to ask what this had to do with Lance, but he figured Pidge was going somewhere and decided to bite his tongue. After all, of all the things Pidge Holt was, a fool was not one of them.

So instead, he fixed his gaze to the girl, still seated on the floor with her chin tucked into her knees. A blue pair of narrowed eyes followed Pidge around the basement, watching as she continued to gather some markers, a ruler, tape, and various other art supplies.

“I don’t know,” the Princess eventually answered. “I... don’t know.”

For the next hour or so, the Princess did not move from her spot in front of the T.V., and Keith and Pidge chose not to disturb her.

Now, Keith splayed his hands out on the table, glaring down onto the map spread out over its surface. His eyes traced the familiar paths again and again, willing something to jump out to him. There were pieces of string and push pins and sticky notes covering the enhanced map of their city, crossed in what would appear as a careless pattern to anyone not familiar with such a ritual.

It was somehow a lot like when he and Pidge were trying to scope out a possible cryptid, except the stakes were much higher and his nerves much more frayed.

They both jumped with the girl finally said something, appearing beside Keith without a sound.

“What _is_ this?” asked the Princess, gesturing to the mess Keith and Pidge had made. Her tone sounded vaguely like Principle Ryder’s when she called Keith down to the office to talk about the assortment of knives found in his locker.

“Hmm?” he glanced over from where Pidge had set up some supplies on their game table, a map of the town sprawled out over most of it. “Oh, it’s the town. This is where we ran into you and found Lance’s jacket. At least, it’s as close as we can guess.”

A puzzled look set over the girl’s brow, joining Keith in his examination without further commentary.

Pidge reappeared after another minute, handing out hastily made sandwiches for each of them. The Princess tentatively accepted hers and took a bite only after Keith and Pidge had both devoured at least half of theirs.

“Okay, recap,” said Pidge around a mouth stuffed full of peanut butter and jelly. “We found Lance’s jacket and the Princess around here.” She pointed to a spot, marking the map with one of the groups Monsters & Mana miniatures. Next, she laid out a long piece of string, following the road, using a few push pins to keep it in place. “And he left my house and went— _hey, stop that!_ ”

Pidge nearly swatted the other girl’s hand as it began to fiddle with the Monsters & Mana figures, picking them up and examining each one closely. She cringed when Pidge snapped at her, however, and set it down herself.

“I—sorry. I’ve never seen such small people before.”

“They’re not—” Keith dragged a hand down his face. “They’re just made to look like people. We have different characters we pretend to be during these games we play, and each of these represent us.”

Nodding, the girl picked up a female figure with long, flowing hair that was separated from the rest of the group. “And this one?”

“That’s supposed to be you. It’s just the only extra girl figure we had.”

“Me?” she blinked at it, moved the miniature close enough to her nose that her eyes went crossed. “Can I keep it?”

“ _No_ ,” Pidge snapped. “It belongs to my brother, so please put it down.”

With a frown, she complied, taking a few steps back from the table and returning to her quiet observation.

“Anyway.” Keith shook his head, returning to the subject at hand. “This was the route Lance would have taken from your house, and seeing as his jacket isn’t ripped or anything… I’d bet he took it off himself and left it.”

With pursed lips, Pidge nodded. “I thought so too. If someone was following him, it could have been to lead them off his trail. Which means…”

One step ahead of her, Keith put a push pin and new line of string down from where the miniature stood, marking the place they’d found the Princess yesterday.

“He was probably here briefly, and then went some other way. So this is the last known location, which is at least a little better than just when he left your house. Well, probably.”

“The question then is: where did he go next? If we connect this point,” she indicated the place of the jacket, and then back to the street, “and assume he took the shortest route between these, he’d be about halfway between my house and his house.”

“I’d guess your house, because he also could have gone off the road here.” Keith pointed in the direction from the new push-pin to the nearest spot on Lance’s route home. “If for some reason he didn’t go towards either house though, he could have headed towards the quarry, or I guess Daibaazal city limits is this way.”

Nodding along, Pidge started to comment on something, but the sound of Bae Bae barking upstairs broke both of them from their focus.

Muttering under her breath, Pidge said, “I love her to death, but sometimes…” only to go rigid a few seconds later.

“Where is the Princess…?” She blinked over Keith’s shoulder, like she might apparate into existence between the flicker of her eyelids.

Bae Bae’s barking intensified, and holding each other’s gaze for all of two seconds, Keith and Pidge positively _flew_ up the stairs.

They found her sitting on the couch in the Holt’s living room, Bae Bae sniffing her hand with interest and tail wagging like mad.

“Look what I found,” the Princess commented with the brightest smile they’d seen on her yet. “A small creature! This one does not speak like the one on your _T.V._ ”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Pidge sighed, dragging her legs across the room to scratch the little dog behind her ears. “Animals don’t speak. Well, except parrots, but those are sort of a special case.”

“None of them?” She quizzed, looking between Keith and Pidge like the very fate of the world hinged on their answer to her question.

“Uh, no.” Keith rubbed his temples. “Can we please go back downstairs—”

He couldn’t even make it through the sentence before Bae Bae was howling at the top of her lungs, effectively cutting off any further attempt at conversation.

“For fucks sake, let me just take Bae Bae out. Now that she’s started she won’t stop barking unless I…” Whistling lightly, Pidge urged the dog towards the back patio. “Come on then, let’s go let’s go.”

The house turned abruptly silent as soon as the back door closed with a soft thud, and Keith stared at the spot where Pidge had been for a beat before turning to the Princess. She had crawled down the length of the couch, now gazing out the large bay-style window that overlooked a scenic, autumnal image that managed to capture something that was deeply, quintessentially midwestern American.

Orange and red and brown leaves aplenty crowded the sidewalks and gutters along the street, most of the lawns mostly raked but imperfect; the skies overcast, but not dark, the day begged for an accompanying blanket or warm drink if spent outside. It was Keith’s favorite kind of weather, if he were honest, and the momentary calm in the living room swelled to reach a small, uncharacteristically vulnerable part of his heart.

It was a perfect day by all of his usual accounts, he even _skipped school_ , and all Keith could afford to feel was spectacularly, overwhelmingly empty.

Letting out a heavy exhale, Keith squared his shoulders.

“Come on, let’s go out with Pidge.” He gestured for the Princess to follow him. “I need a cigarette.”

 

* * *

 

_Garrison, Indiana_

_November 9, 1982_

_11:34 am (11:34)_

 

Chewing on the end of his pencil, Hunk stared at the back of the girl two seats in front of him.

Two seats, because the one in front of him had been unoccupied for two days now. That’s where Lance usually sat.

It was at least nice that no one had taken his seat while he was… missing.

It had been a long time since Hunk had felt like––like _this._ He’d been friends with Lance for over eight years, so he’d say about that long.

Lonely was one word for it, but it kind of missed the mark, if Hunk were being honest.

He was an only child. The Garrett house consisted of just him and his Mom, so it’s not like he wasn’t used to being alone on occasion, but this was different.

For starters, Hunk knew his own strengths and weaknesses. He was methodical and high-functioning, but with that came a lot of anxiety; he had to train himself to be okay with Keith’s impulsive behavior and Pidge’s chaotic approach to just about everything. Lance was high-maintenance in a different kind of way, but Hunk had basically grown up with that and it was just second-nature to being best friends with someone like Lance.

Though his choice of friends might beg the contrary, on a day-to-day basis, Hunk really just appreciated uniformity and organization whenever possible. His planner was his lifeline. He color-coded his notes, made to-do lists just to cross something off throughout the day, and kept a detailed log of everything he and his friends did––important dates like birthdays, phone numbers, Shiro’s football games or Lance’s swim meets. It wasn’t a coincidence that he was elected as notetaker for their Monsters & Mana campaign.

But, at least right now, it felt an awful lot like his notes were mocking him, highlighter posed over a half-thought out sentence he’d jotted down from the projector.

For the better part of his life, the knowledge of his best friend’s whereabouts was a privilege Hunk only now realized he’d taken for granted. Even if he didn’t know where Lance was or hadn’t seen him for awhile, he’d always at least known how to _find_ him. At the start of a new school year, Hunk knew he could track down Lance’s locker, always placed dead-center of their grade’s lockers since they were in alphabetical order, and he generally knew what sort of activities Lance did after school. There was a finite list of possibilities. Hunk had long since memorized the quickest and safest route to get to the McClain house, and knew their phone number by heart.

The day passed slowly, and Hunk did his best to take dutiful notes in each class despite the gnawing worries in the back of his mind, trying in vain to ignore the million-and-one _what if’s_ he couldn’t answer.

And yet, for all the mess of feelings Hunk was trying to sort through, it all boiled down to one surprisingly simple thing.

He was just… _sad_.

Lance was missing, and Hunk missed his best friend. The situation turned his heart to stone, made it heavy and bothersome in his chest.

Distracted as he was, Hunk barely registered that the bell rang for the end of class. He put away his notes and closed up his pencil pouch, tossing all of it into his bookbag. Moodily, the teenager trudged down the hallway and up the stairs that would lead him to his AP Chemistry class; at least he could pay minimal attention in his lesson without missing much.

Sliding into his seat, the overhead bell rang again, and Mr. Smythe stepped in front of the room with a small stack of papers.

“Pop quiz!”

 _Crap._ Considering he was out on a crazy quest last night that had nothing to do with rolling dice and involved a lot more realistic consequences then a critical fail on a d20, Hunk had not managed to do the assigned reading.

The test was… _fine._ Not great, if he were honest, but thankfully it was short and some of the material was more conceptual than technical. He probably got, like, a mid-B on it.

Which, like, Hunk _knew_ was better than _fine_ for most people, but Hunk also knew he wasn’t most people. The inexact but unmistakable edge of _wrongness,_ the feeling of his orderly life slipping out of his hands, was strangely overwhelming. Teeth grit, he zoned out, absorbing nothing but lines and black ink along the worksheet Mr. Smythe passed out once the quiz was finished. They’d been given the option to work in pairs, but Pidge was absent, so he stayed seated and focused on his molecular equations on his own.

Well, he tried. He really, _really_ tried. Why was he blinking tears from his eyes? What was _wrong_ with him?

There were a few words Hunk didn’t throw around often, but he really meant it when he said he really _hated_ this. Part of him actually considered faking-sick so he could go home early but—but that wasn’t _him_! He was not the kind of person to do that, and yet it sounded like the only appealing option right now.

It was so frustrating!

Nothing about this situation was good, was it? He felt for the McClains, couldn’t imagine how hard this must be for them: Veronica was absent today, and he had to imagine Rachel and Luis both were at their house, trying to uncover any possible information they could on where Lance might have gone. Then, there was their own group of friends, the girl they found in the woods, as well as solid, _hard_ evidence that Lance had at least been out there.

He felt for Pidge, who treated Lance like she was as much her brother as Matt, and he felt for Shiro, who pushed Lance to be the best version of himself everyday and was admired in return by Hunk’s best friend.

Then, of course, there was _Keith_.

...That was a whole other level of emotional baggage he didn’t even know how to sort out, and he wasn’t even _involved_ for goodness sake.

 

* * *

 

_Garrison, Indiana_

_September 1, 1982_

_6:50 pm (18:50)_

 

What ancient evil did Lance piss off to deserve this?

It was a question that crossed his mind often enough that he was convinced that there _must_ be something he’d done in a past life that was giving him bad karma, or he had somehow unknowingly desecrated a Native American burial ground, or _something_.

Because no one, and he meant _no one_ , had worse luck when it came to dating than him.

“I can’t believe it.” Lance’s head rolled back against the couch, reliving the past few hours and cringing at the memory. “I really thought she was into me!”

Hunk took a drink from his soda, trying to mind the movie and his friend’s crisis at the same time.

“I know, Lance.”

“And all she wanted was for me to introduce her to _Keith_?”

“Yes, Lance, I know.”

“Because, like, I know Keith is cool and all but, am I undateable or something?”

Snorting, Hunk threw some popcorn his way. “No, Lance. You’re perfectly fine.”

“Fine isn’t _that_ good.” Sulkily, Lance picked the evidence of his friend’s edible warfare off his shirt and lap and started to pop them in his mouth one by one. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t _get_ it. If you can get past his dumb hair, he’s actually pretty _okay_ looking. I guess.”

“Sure, Lance.”

There was about thirty seconds of uninterrupted engagement with the movie, but Hunk felt his eye twitch when that peace was inevitably broken.

“Seriously, Hunk, what’s wrong with me?”

Letting out a long, _long_ sigh, Hunk paused the movie he’d been failing to watch. He’d have to get up and rewind the tape at least twenty minutes, so he might as well quit while he was ahead.

“Nothing is _wrong_ with you,” he said, sitting up and leveling Lance with a serious look. “You’re a great guy, Lance, but a lot of people our age are pretty… shallow? Not a lot of people really want a relationship, just to be like, out and about and dating and whatever.”

Lance curled up further into the couch cushion. “You know, maybe you’re right Hunk.”

A wide grin began to spread across his face, relieved to hear––

“I should just try to date someone older! More mature, that makes sense.”

“ _Lance_ ,” he groaned. “That’s not what I said at all.”

“But they have to be funny, not _too_ serious. And someone who can take it and dish it out, too, you know? Like, a sharp tongue! That’s a must. And, oh, pretty eyes.”

“Can I unpause the movie?”

“I’d love to date someone with long hair, too. Enough to run your hands through it, you know? Shoulder length or longer is perfect.”

“Lance, I’m moving to Alaska.”

“And if I could be picky, I’d say like, someone who doesn’t care what other people think about them? I feel like I would need someone who could brush things off since to balance me out."

“My dog died.”

“Is it weird to think it’s hot if someone could kick your ass? If so then I’m definitely weird, like––”

“ _Lance_ ,” Hunk said sharply. “I’m literally begging you to stop.”

More seriously, Lance shot Hunk an appreciative, if not sheepish, smile. “Sorry, sorry. This has just been on my mind all day. I know I shouldn’t care so much about just one girl, but I do. I guess I just… it’s easy to get caught up making up stuff in my head, when it just feels like no one actually wants me in that way.”

“...Buddy.” With the patience of a saint, Hunk took a steadying breath. “I think you’ve just been going after the wrong people. Think about it––don’t we already maybe _know_ someone who has those _exact_ qualities?”

“Uhh, no?”

“Oh my god, Lance.” Hunk chuckled, pulling his friend into a sudden, bone-crushing hug. “I love you, but you’re so dumb sometimes.”

Sarcastically, Lance muttered, “ _Thanks_ _a lot_.”

“Don’t be like that, dude. A few bad dates doesn’t mean people hate you. What about K––the others? And me? _We_ definitely don’t hate you.”

“I _knooooow_ ,” he hid his face in his hands. “I know that and my brain still can’t get it all sorted out. I can’t explain why but I just feel, like, _bad_. Like no one wants me, I guess. Or confused? Like, I just get that I’d probably be what a lot of people would consider ‘settling’, and I don’t know if I hate that or I’ve started to accept it. Both options suck, to be honest.”

Hunk patted him gently on the head like a puppy. “I know that, to someone, you’re going to be their first choice, bud. You’ve just got to wait for the right person.”

A small grin quirked up the corner of Lance’s lips, and he opened his mouth to say something but they were interrupted by the doorbell.

“Oh, that’s gotta be the others. Just a sec.”

“Right.” Lance stayed tucked under a blanket on the Garret’s couch, rubbing his the heels of his palms into his eyes to try to release some tension. It was supposed to be a lowkey Friday night, he just had to forget about Plaxum and focus on having a good time.

After maybe thirty seconds, a slightly muffled version of Pidge’s voice brought him out of his sort-of-reviere, and he opened his eyes to see Keith entering the living room. He presumed Hunk and Pidge were still lingering somewhere near the front door.

“Hey, man.” Lance greeted, trying to appear breezy. “What’s up?”

Keith paused on his way to sitting down, fixing Lance with a look. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Nothing, really.” Silently, Lance cursed himself for sounding so pitchy and nervous. What was wrong with him? The whole thing with Plaxum must have gotten under his skin more than he thought.

When the dark-haired teen continued to look at him doubtfully, and there was no sign of Hunk or Pidge for several seconds, he exhaled heavily. “Okay, okay. It was just that thing earlier with that Plaxum girl. I was pretty excited because I thought she liked me, and when it turned out she just wanted to get to know _you_ , I felt––”

“I told her to fuck off,” Keith interrupted, elbow propped up on the arm rest on the opposite side of the couch, chin resting in his open palm. “You deserve way better than that.”

“I–– _pff_. Good one, Samurai.” A dry, humorless laughed passed over him. “Beggars can’t be choosers, not that you would know.”

An annoyed look crossed Keith’s face, brow furrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means––you’re dumb and you should mind your own business.”

“Wow. Grade A friendship right here.” Rolling his eyes, Keith took the bowl of popcorn Hunk had previously used to assault Lance, shoving a graceless handful in his own mouth.

“That’s gross,” Lance laughed at Keith’s stuffed cheeks.

The other boy just shrugged, speaking around a mouthful of popcorn.“‘m hu’gry.”

“Chew like a human being.”

“Bite me,” Keith said, swallowing this time.

Lance, flustered by the sinister twist of Keith’s grin, flared his nostrils. “Maybe I will!”

It took about five minutes for the room to be covered in popcorn; the amount of little nooks and crannies that pieces and kernels had managed to stick was downright impressive. Lampshades, behind the TV, in Lance’s jacket pocket, along the windowsill, stuck in hair and even the ceiling, a tornado of seeds and crunchy crumbs littered the Garret living room.

Laughing harder than he had in a long time, Lance found himself thoroughly at Keith’s mercy at the end of the fight, pinned to the ground with a handful of popcorn shoved into his mouth like some sort of victory gesture.

“Hah–– _I win_ ––” Keith panted, holding Lance’s wrists over his head and straddling his waist. “Better luck next time.”

There was barely enough time to huff before a startled squeal caused them both to jump, immediately followed by the hollowing sound of laughter, so sudden and intense Lance thought it sounded rather like a hyena caught in a coughing fit.

“ _M-My house!”_ Hunk screeched, quickly assessing the damage before his eyes fell on Lance and Keith on the floor. “Oh god, please don’t make out on my carpet––”

“ _HUNK!”_

“Holy–– _holy shit_ ––” Pidge was crying laughing, although she was the only one who seemed to find the situation funny.

 

* * *

 

_Garrison, Indiana_

_November 9, 1982_

_(12:47pm) (12:47)_

 

“Hunk, m’boy,” Mr. Smythe’s voice knocked into him like a gale force wind, and Hunk flinched when a hand came to his shoulder. “Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I—” hesitating, Hunk glanced around, shocked to see he was no longer surrounded by students. “Where is…?”

“The bell rang almost two minutes ago, lad. Is this about… ah, why don’t you come sit in my office for a minute? I can write you up a pass for your next class.”

Sighing, Hunk nodded and tucked his untouched worksheet into his AP Chemistry folder, gathered his bookbag, and quietly trudged after Mr. Smythe into his adjacent office. It was a familiar room, the same place they gathered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for Robotics Club.

“I’m sorry.” Hunk sat down in one of two seats opposite Coran’s messy desk, the Heathkid proudly on display. “I probably failed the quiz today. I just—”

Mustache bristling, the hint of a smile edged into Mr. Smythe’s voice. “Now, now, that’s alright. I’m just as guilty as you. The quiz won’t be graded against anyone’s scores—just extra credit. I’m afraid with Lance’s… _situation_ , I wasn’t able to be very productive when it came to my lesson plan.”

“Oh.” Hunk blinked a few times, surprised and a little relieved. At least the lesson wasn’t a total loss. “I—um, thank you, Mr. Smythe. I guess we were all just really worried. Keith and Pidge and me, I mean. And Shiro. Yesterday when Chief Sanda came...”

The man nodded seriously, twisting the end of his facial hair in an absentminded manner. “Yes, I’m afraid I’m quite aware of the details. Several of us teachers have been interviewed already by the police… I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but if you or any of the others feel like you need to talk to someone, my door is always open.”

Tersely, Hunk swallowed his the lump forming in his throat. “T-Thank you. I know, and I’m sure Pidge and Keith and Shiro do, too. It’s just all really confusing right now… I just, I wish things could go back to normal. I feel like in just barely more than a day everything has been turned upside down.”

“As is often the case when someone leaves your life unexpectedly.” Mr. Smythe smiled fondly. “But just because someone is gone, doesn’t mean they’re not coming back.”

At that, Hunk nodded. He still felt hurt, and confusion, and loneliness, and worry, and fear, and anxiety, but Mr. Smythe’s reassurance—while simple—helped to dull some of the sharpest edges of all of his millions of concerns.

Like the freakin’ girl they were hiding at Pidge’s house, for instance.

Hunk straightened in his seat. “Actually, Mr. Smythe, can I ask you something?”

Brows raised, Mr. Smythe nodded. “Of course, m’boy. Ask away.”

“You’ve lived in Garrison for a long time, right?”

“Indeed, though I moved away for a few years there to get my degree, Garrison has always been home to me.”

“...Right.” Hunk anxiously twisted his fingers together. “I was wondering… what’s the weirdest thing that’s happened in this town?”

“Oh, well,” Mr. Smythe sat back in his chair, rubbing his chin. “I suppose that’s a matter of opinion. But I certainly do have a story that I think would give all the others a run for their money.”

 

 

Across town, Keith nursed the last bit of nicotine he could from his cigarette before ashing it, a one-of-a-kind calm washing over him with each drag. At this rate he would need to buy another carton before the week was over.

He sighed. Privately, he’d actually been working towards quitting, but this was definitely a ‘ _one step forward, two steps back’_ kind of thing.

Pidge and the Princess were speaking quietly and tending to an affectionate Bae Bae on the other side of the porch. In an attempt to be courteous, Keith tried to keep the smoke from blowing downwind of where they were seated.

Honestly, Keith was a bit confused over her presence. He didn’t mind that she had stayed, but there wasn’t really a good reason why she hadn’t left just yet. Anything Keith wanted to know had basically been covered the night before, but he also didn’t feel compelled to push her away, and since Pidge didn’t say anything, Keith didn’t bring it up.

For that, he was grateful, because it didn’t require him to explain himself. Indeed, Keith still wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t crazy, but for the life of him he could _not_ quell his… _intuition_ over this whole thing. That the girl and Lance’s disappearance were somehow related. Like trying to cup water in his hands, every line of reasoning would trickle through his fingertips if he tried to gather his thoughts with any amount of sense. It wasn’t that Lance was _gone_ , but that there was something _left behind_ in his absence. An echo of… something. An outlined sketch, a charcoal rendering, an abstract portrait—he couldn’t explain it, but there was an _impression_ of something that lingered in the back of his mind, drew his thoughts like a magnet, guided his instincts.

And, at least right now, all signs pointed to this girl having something to do with it.

Once they re-entered the house, Pidge led the way into the basement, but the Princess stopped and hovered beside the stairs. Keith found her gazing at the Holt’s many framed pictures, mostly Matt and Pidge, some featuring cousins and aunts and uncles, others of Bae Bae and a family friend or another, and even his own face featured in a few of them.

The girl’s brow was drawn, much more seriously than most people just idly looking at a picture, and Keith needed only follow her line of sight to understand why.

“Ah.” A framed photo of the regional Robotics Tournament of 1981.

She glanced his way, and then back to the picture. “Who…?”

“That’s… well, _us_.” Keith sighed, the sound falling out of him with his breath. He had the same picture, naturally, since he was in it. They all had one.

Pidge and Hunk were grinning from ear-to-ear, and seeing as they’d done almost all the work, it was a fitting expression to wear for their first place victory. Keith had been wedged next to Lance, who hand slung his arm around his and Hunk’s necks and were tugging them in with too-much-force, causing Keith to scowl and leer at him instead of the camera. Shiro stood tall and proud on his other side, a big dorky thumbs-up held up for the camera.

“And this?” She pointed at the only face that she hadn’t seen before, which made sense.

“That’s— _Lance_.”

“Oh…” biting her lip, guilt was evident on her features as her arm fell away. “You miss him.”

It wasn’t a question.

“He… he makes it really hard not to miss him.”

The Princess looked at the photo for a very long time after that. “He reminds me of someone I knew once. She had the same smile.”

“Really?” Keith couldn’t help but laugh, because anything else would probably send him over the edge into a very different fit of hysterics. “I find that hard to believe. Lance is pretty one-of-a-kind.”

“So was she,” she insisted. “No one else was like her, not in the whole universe.”

The words were spoken with an abrupt amount of finality, embodied a sort of _conviction_ that Keith could not help but believe. To her, this person must have been as irreplaceable as Lance was to them.

“Was she nice?”

“Oriande, no.” The girl surprised him by snorting. _Oriande_?  “She was a trouble-maker, but with a kind heart. Loyal. _Brave_.”

“What was her name?” Keith asked.

The Princess smiled at something far off, miles and years into a past Keith couldn’t even begin to glean. “She was like me, without a name. But I called her by the colors I saw when we met—Blue.”

There were several more seconds of silence, the girl staring at the picture with both fondness and concern, and something else that Keith couldn’t quite place. Guilt, maybe?

“ _Are you guys coming or what?!_ ” Pidge shouted.

Shaking his head, Keith motioned for them to head back downstairs, to which the Princess hesitantly followed behind him.

Once downstairs, the girl’s body language shifted, closing off and occupying as little space as possible once again. Tentative, she approached the table on which they’d been mapping out the city, she knelt so she could be at eye-level with the same miniature that had captured her attention earlier.

Pidge and Keith exchanged a confused look for a few seconds before deciding to just work around her, but that plan was quickly forgotten.

“You asked me earlier,” the Princess said, voice soft. “About my tipping point. I think I… know it now.”

Pidge adjusted her glasses, suddenly very interested. “Yes? And what about it?”

“I was tired,” the Princess eventually answered, her voice low, suffused with the same exhaustion Keith had seen in the bags beneath her eyes last night. “I was tired of hurting all of the time.”

Keith managed to hide his wince by adjusting his posture. “So, they… hurt you?”

“No, no.” The girl took in a deep inhale, turning to Keith with a strikingly remorseful look on her face. “They did not hurt me. I was tired of being the one _hurting_. Hurting… others.”

Pidge paused at that, just for a few seconds. “So they made you hurt other people.”

“Not people.”

“Things?”

“I… yes.” Head tilted upwards, the Princess focused on the ceiling with an oddly serene smile. “The doctors would tell me stories when I was small, about monsters who would try to hurt me, and how I was one of the most special people in the world because I could protect anyone from the monsters.”

Her voice trailed off, and Keith caught Pidge’s eye, finding his own confusion mirrored in the hook of her brow and the downturn of her lips.

“There were not many _people_ around for me to hurt, but I do remember some faces. There were also a few instances when I did hurt people, but never on purpose. I was told I was important, because I kept the monsters away.”

“So… what happened?” Keith eventually asked.

The Princess’s soulfire blue eyes snapped to his, gaze sharper than ice and twice as cold.

“ _I became the monster_.”

**Author's Note:**

> im on tumblr -- my ask/prompt box is always open, and I try to drop 'chapter previews' and info about my update schedule on there, so don't be afraid to [come say hi!!!](https://real-fakedoors.tumblr.com/#_=_)


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